I recoil, a feeling like I want to hide washing over me. He’s looking at me like I’m stupid.

  He likes me in his kitchen and in his room. Not anywhere else.

  “Take her home,” he orders.

  Santos, who I didn’t see arrive, steps up.

  I can’t look at Macon. “I have a car,” I say, and start to walk past him.

  “And make sure she doesn’t leave,” he calls out.

  Santos takes my wrist, but before I can pull away, I hear a voice. “Don’t touch her,” someone else says.

  I look up at Trace. Eyes hard, he stands tall—taller than I’ve ever seen him—and everything goes quiet. Even the rain.

  Santos releases me.

  Trace takes a few steps closer to his brother. Macon turns to face him.

  “You can talk to us like that,” Trace says. “Because sometimes we deserve it, but she’s not your property.”

  My eyes sting. Macon stands toe to toe with his brother, getting in his face.

  Trace stays rooted. “I won’t hit back,” he tells him, “but I’m not gonna back up anymore.”

  I almost smile.

  “With her,” he says to Macon, “you have to be gentle.”

  “You taking her back?” Macon dares him.

  Taking me back. Like I’m an object who doesn’t speak.

  I look away, but I see Trace turn to me out of the corner of my eye. I meet his gaze.

  “Can I have you back?” he asks.

  I open my mouth, but I don’t say anything. I don’t want to start up with Trace again, but I also love that he’s asking. It feels like something has changed inside of him.

  He steps over, takes my hand, and says, “I’ll give you a ride home.”

  He starts to lead me away, but I pull him back and hug him tight. My chest fills up with something, and I don’t know what it is, but it feels good. I wish we’d started like this. As friends. “I love you, too,” I whisper.

  I take off Liv’s raincoat and turn to Macon, stepping closer. “You weren’t going to keep me, were you?”

  He stares.

  I force down the lump in my throat. “If I make love to you…” I lower my voice. “I don’t think I’m ever going to want anyone else.” I gaze at him, desperate for everyone else to disappear so he’ll let me touch him. “Will you keep me?”

  His chest falls hard.

  I want him to keep me, but something is holding him back. Maybe it’s my age. Maybe he thinks his health will be a burden on me.

  Maybe it’s something else.

  But I can’t sleep in his bed tonight.

  “Aracely,” I call out over my shoulder. “Would you take me home?”

  I leave, catching up to her. Both of us jump into her car, and I lock my door because I don’t trust myself if he tries to pry me back.

  Trace was right. I need him to be gentle.

  We take off, the radio playing music, and I almost tell her to stop a hundred times. He’s prideful. He won’t come for me. He would rather suffer for twenty years than admit he needs me with him. He won’t come to St. Carmen.

  He would never cross the tracks for a woman.

  Soon, we’re out of the Bay and climbing up into my neighborhood, the rain a steady but light fall.

  Aracely hasn’t said anything.

  I finally speak up. “You’re in love…with Army.” I look over at her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.”

  She holds the wheel with both hands, keeping her eyes trained out the front windshield. “You weren’t supposed to. He certainly doesn’t.”

  “And you certainly don’t beat around the bush with me,” I muse. “So why have you with him? Why don’t you tell him?”

  “I did,” she replies flatly. “When I was fifteen.”

  Oh.

  “He was nineteen at the time and laughed in my face. I told him again when I was eighteen and when I was twenty.”

  “Didn’t you go out with Iron and Dallas during that time?”

  She dated them both somewhere in there.

  But she just plucks a cigarette out of her pack in the console. “Yeah, well…that was never about love. For them, either.”

  I watch her, and I’m more and more curious about her as time goes on. She didn’t want to stay close to the family. She wanted to stay close to Army. Any way she could. Cleaning their house, working their restaurant, dating Iron and Dallas…

  Maybe Army would find out he misses her if there came a time when she wasn’t around. She strikes me as the type who, unlike me, knows exactly what she wants to do with her life.

  We pull onto my street, and she says, “I can do better anyway. Clay’s dad is single, right?”

  I burst into a laugh. We swing up to my gate, and I see through the bars that the house is dark. Paisleigh and Mars are at my grandparents’, and if the gate is closed, my mom is still gone. “Five-five-eight-three-oh-two.” I tell Aracely the code.

  She looks at me, lifting her eyebrows for a second like she didn’t expect me to tell her. All my friends have the code.

  She punches in the numbers and waits for the gate to open before she speeds through. Winding around my driveway, she stops in front of my door.

  I’m about to ask if she wants to come in and make margaritas, but she speaks before I do. “What was he like?” she asks, staring at the steering wheel. “Army?”

  I drop my eyes. “Please don’t ask me that.”

  But she argues, “You owe me. Was it good?”

  I unfasten my seat belt, but I don’t leave.

  “Is he big?” she whispers, sounding so small all of a sudden. “Where does he touch?”

  My chest aches, not because of the questions, but her tone. She wants to know because she wants to know how he’d be with her.

  “You’re going to get everything you want.” I meet her eyes. “I wouldn’t say that to everyone, but I don’t think you’ll fail.”

  I climb out of the car and dip down, peeking back inside through the window. “He won’t be able to stand it,” I tell her. “When he falls for you.”

  A smile peeks out at the corner of her lips, and I slam the door, heading inside.

  26

  Macon

  “Do me a favor, man.” Dallas runs his hand through his hair. “Please?”

  The music pounds, and I move my eyes around the room, glaring but not seeing anything but her in my head.

  “Get laid,” he tells me, gesturing to the women at the table near the jukebox. “Pick one. Pick two. You need something warm. A woman. Not a kid.”

  A kid…

  Exactly.

  Krisjen Conroy acts like a fucking child. Just like Trace. Instead of admitting she did something wrong, she gets pouty and leaves. What was I thinking? That’s how all of my days with her would be. Putting up with an endless stream of bullshit because she’s fun to fuck?

  I bite the inside of my mouth. Hard.

  A kid…

  That kid…is a fucking planet.

  God, I never wanted something so much until her. The light spilling through the windows in my room cast this purple glow on her skin tonight. All I saw were stars. Another world.

  “I thought you liked her now,” Army gripes to Dallas.

  “I do like her,” he replies. “But she was never going to stay. None of them stay.”

  A blonde with a high ponytail, wearing a yellow tank top, holds my eyes. I ball my fists under my arms.

  “She’ll marry rich,” Dallas continues, “and we’ll eventually be no more than a passing nod on the street. We’ll be mowing her lawn someday.”

  She’d fucking love that, wouldn’t she? Paying me to come to her house…

  “She’s theirs,” he goes on.

  Allowing me to step inside her shiny, white foyer so she can write me a check…

  “Not ours,” he finishes.

  I drop my arms and shoot off, seeing the blonde at the table sit up straight with a smile playing on her lips.

  But I veer right, heading away from her and straight out the goddamn door.

  “Macon!” Army calls behind me.

  Followed by Dallas shouting, “Where are you going?”

  I pull my keys out of my pocket and head for my truck, but a thought occurs to me, and I head inside the house instead. Running up the stairs, I dive into my bedroom and whip open the closet door. Pulling out the garment bag, I unzip it and pull out the black suit I wore to my parents’ funerals.

  I stopped attending them after that, and haven’t touched these clothes since, priding myself on being a working man. I never wanted to look like I was trying to be better than the rest of Sanoa Bay.

  I don’t know why I want her to see me differently. I’m not ashamed of being a worker. Trace wears jeans and T-shirts. Iron, too.

  Army wears shirts as little as possible, and Dallas knows he’ll get laid with just a smile.

  I want her to know I’m not them.

  I pull the gun I retrieved from Mariette’s out of the back of my jeans and walk over to my nightstand, about to drop it in the drawer when I notice the one that I had stashed there is missing.

  My brothers always knew it was there. It’s been there for years.

  She’s in my bed for a week, and it’s gone.

  I guess I have to go after her now. I need the gun back.

  I smile a little, dropping Mariette’s in the drawer in its place and undressing.

  I don the suit, picking out a black shirt and black tie, and run my fingers through my hair. Grabbing my keys, I head back down the stairs and out the door, to my truck. Climbing in, I set off, speeding across the tracks to St. Carmen.

  The broken dirt gives way to crumbling concrete that slowly turns into fresh blacktop, and I go from hearing the tires under the truck to hearing nothing.

  The shop windows are all dark, rain shimmering like fireflies under the streetlights, and I keep my eyes forward as I pass turns that I haven’t taken in years, and businesses I was never good enough to shop in.

  It still baffles me that I opted to send Liv to school over here. I just knew it was the way out. I couldn’t afford it yet with Dallas, and Trace had no interest in his education. Plus, I owed Liv.

  We didn’t grow up together, so she never really knew me, and I didn’t make it easier. She had goals, and I wanted one person in the family to go to college.

  But I made sure she never gave that school a reason to call me over here. I wanted to step foot in this town as little as possible.

  And now, here I am…starving for one of their daughters.

  I swing into her driveway, seeing a couple of lights on, and race around the patch of grass in the middle. The tires scream as I halt in front of her door.

  Hopping out, I leave the keys inside and straighten my tie.

  I press the doorbell.

  Checking my phone, I read the time—11:03.

  She said her siblings were with her grandparents. And if her mother came back early, then oh well. I guess we’re doing this tonight.

  Krisjen appears at the sidelight window, but she quickly moves out of sight. “I don’t want to see you,” she calls out.

  I reach my arms out and grip the doorframe. “Well, I want to see you!”

  “I don’t care!”

  Is she fucking kidding me? Does she know what it takes for me to come over to this shithole?

  “Go home!” she yells.

  But her voice is distanced.

  Like she’s moved away from the door.

  Good.

  I don’t take time to think. I release the doorframe, take one step back, and shoot out my nice fucking leather shoe and kick the goddamn door.

  It takes two more kicks to get the splintered wood to break away, and I charge in, seeing her in the middle of the foyer, breathing hard and wide-eyed as she scurries back, putting distance between us.

  The alarm splits my ear, blaring shrill and loud.

  I head straight for her.

  “Are you crazy?” she growls.

  God, she’s cute in a ponytail.

  “Turn off the alarm,” I bark.

  She folds her arms over her chest, not moving.

  I narrow my eyes as the shrill scream of the alarm cuts through my brain.

  Goddammit…

  A phone rings, and I dart my gaze to the wall where a landline phone is posted next to the alarm.

  She stands there.

  “Answer it,” I tell her.

  They’ll send security if she doesn’t.

  But she just tips her chin down, a challenge in her fucking beautiful eyes.

  Son of a bitch.

  “Krisjen…”

  The phone rings four more times and then stops. She smiles to herself.

  Twisting around, she punches a code into the alarm and the shrieking ceases. Spinning back toward me, she flexes her jaw. “It’s like a three-minute response time,” she says. “Better say what you gotta say quickly.”

  “Who said I wanted to talk?”

  She shakes her head at me.

  Motherfucker.

  In two seconds, I’m in front of her, taking her hips in my hands and getting down in her face.

  She scowls up at me. “You’re not old enough for me.”

  I kiss her, taking her face in my hands and moving over her lips, hungry to get lost in her again. I press into her as she groans into my mouth.

  Where is her bedroom?

  But she rips her mouth away. “I can’t be what keeps you alive.” She breathes out. “I can’t take care of you. I can’t even take care of myself.”

  “I don’t want you to take care of me!” I growl, pulling her into me. “I don’t want you to make me soup and clean up after me and tell me what to eat and what not to drink! I don’t want you to do the things a mother does!” I hover over her lips, starving as I lower my voice to a whisper. “I want you to do the things a girlfriend does.”

  Her eyebrows pinch together, pained, but her gaze on my mouth is just as desperate. Hot and sweet and crazy.

  But strong.

  So strong.

  I was made for her.

  “Touch me.” I rest my forehead to hers. “And kiss me and come to bed in pretty things, or nothing, or my fucking sweatpants, for all I care, because God, you look good in them.” I trail my mouth up her cheek to her temple. “And smile at me when you’re happy, and yell at me when you’re mad, and ride with me on the back of my bike in the rain.” I come back to her eyes. “Drag me to dumb shit like plays and couples’ game nights and stick your tongue in my mouth whenever possible.”

  She expels all the air in her lungs, tears welling, and I can see the smile hiding behind her stubborn mouth.

  Her eyes drop to my lips again, she comes in, and then…

  Red lights flash across her face.

  She pulls away, and I look behind me, seeing the fucking red and blue gumballs of their neighborhood rent-a-cops.

  I turn back to her, but she’s moving away, a coy look in her eyes. “I don’t think you have these cops on your payroll,” she taunts.

  I match her steps. “Call them off.”

  “And let them think they can leave me alone with you?”

  She backs up, around the stairs, and I stalk her. The front door hangs open, the frame splintered. It’s an obvious break-in. They will take me in.

  “Krisjen…” I scold.

  She smirks. “I’ll tell Trace.”

  Like he’s her protector now. She’s daring me.

  I arch a brow. “I raised that boy to share.”

  “You just want your turn, is that it?”

  My turn? I break into a smile, the police lights getting closer.

  She falters, seeing my amusement. “What?”

  I shake my head. “Nothing.”

  She continues to back up, and I match her step for step. “What if I’m pregnant?” she asks.

  I pause, my heart beating faster. “Are you?”

  “I could be,” she says. “It would be one of your brothers’.”

  No.

  It wouldn’t.

  “It would be mine,” I tell her.

  She breathes out a laugh. “Do you think Trace would agree that his child belongs to you?”

  She better stop fucking talking about having anyone else’s kid.

  “It would be mine,” I bite out. “Trace had a vasectomy as soon as he turned eighteen. He doesn’t want kids.”

  She slows her steps. She didn’t know that.

  “And Iron and Army always wrap it up,” I inform her. “I had to feel you.”

  “But you didn’t come inside of m—”

  I cock my head, and her chest caves.

  I didn’t come inside of her…tonight.

  She swallows. “You.”

  Yeah.

  Her breathing hitches as she backs up more. “You son of a bitch. How could…Why did you push me away? I was yours!” She glares at me, pained. “I would’ve been yours in a heartbeat. A thousand more times! You acted like you didn’t want me in the garage that night we fixed the car. Why didn’t you say something?”

  “You knew it was me.” I stop in front of her. “You always knew it was me. Do you think I didn’t notice you months ago? How you’d hold your breath every time I walked in a room? You knew it the next morning when I sat down at the table and the jolt hit your heart, because it hit mine, too.” I search her eyes. “The hyperawareness we have around each other. You knew the moment it happened that you didn’t want it to be anyone else.”

  She shakes her head as if in denial.

  Knocks sound on the broken door. “Hello?”

  “Are you pregnant?” I ask in a whisper.

  She just keeps shaking her head frantically. “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “If you have my kid, there’s no escaping me, Krisjen.”