“Aw, so you’re the hero type.” I playfully bump my shoulder into his. “Never would have guessed that about you.”

He comes so close to smiling. Just a little more joking, and I know I can make it happen.

I open my mouth to crack another joke, but snap my jaw shut when I spot the Gregory’s gigantic sedan parked amongst the other line of cars. “Crap.”

“What?” Ayden tracks my gaze to the driver’s seat where Aunt Lila is sitting. And in the passenger seat is my mother. “Okay, so now what do we do?”

I overdramatically bobble my head back. “Now, we go face the music.”

Aunt Lila is so grateful for my stepping in for Ayden that she actually starts to tear up. She seems heartbroken that someone would want to hurt him. She keeps saying to him, “You’ve already been through so much. This isn’t fair.” I can tell Ayden gets really uncomfortable with the waterworks. Thankfully, my mom intervenes and calms Lila down. Then, she turns around in her seat and lays my punishment on me.

The punishment is the stupidest thing ever, though. One week of cleaning my room and one week of hanging out with Ayden after school. Plus, I have to help out at the shelter on Thanksgiving. Like that’s a punishment. I have to clean my room anyway and the shelter thing is a tradition.

After we get home, I end up in Ayden’s room, sprawled on the bed with the door agape. Lila keeps coming in to check on us, as if she half expects to catch us naked and fondling each other. Fat chance that’ll happen. Even though Ayden is ridiculously adorable in a self-tortured artist, gothic, I’m-internally-tortured sort of way, I’m saving myself for someone who will capture my wild soul and tame it. I know I sound like a sap, but I blame it on my parents’ undying love story. Even after twenty years of marriage, they're still ridiculously in love, so the bar for my own love story is set pretty high.

“Are you sure you two don’t want a snack?” Lila sticks her head into the room for the umpteenth time.

Ayden nods as he situates against the headboard, working on his English assignment. “I’m sure.”

She looks at me and I shrug. “I ate a buttload of cookies before I came up here.”

“Okay,” she says disappointedly then leaves us to get back to our homework.

The soft tune of “Cardiac Arrest” by Bad Suns flows from the stereo as Ayden continues to jot answers down, but. I’m more fixated on him than my assignment.

“So, did the gauges hurt when you got them?” I ask as I doodle thorny vines all over my math paper.

When he glances up from his paper, strands of his black hair hang in his grey eyes. “I don’t know. Probably about as bad as your ear piercings.”

I touch the rose earrings in my ears then kneel up on the mattress. “What about tattoos?”

“What about them?”

“Do you have any?”

“I’m only sixteen.”

“Yeah, so.” I arch my back as I stretch. “I bet you do, don’t you?” When he wavers, I immediately perk up. “Where are they?”

“There’s no they.” He sets down the pencil in the spine of the book and flexes his fingers like he has a cramp. “Just one.”

“Can I see it?” I eagerly move over to sit down beside him.

His expression plummets. “I don’t think …” He trails off when my mouth sinks. “Fine, I’ll show you, but only if you promise not to ask questions.”

I draw an X over my chest with my finger. “I promise.”

A nervous exhale escapes his lips as he reaches for the hem of his black T-shirt. Excitement bubbles inside me as he lifts it up and shows me his stomach then his side. Black ink stains his flesh in swirls and patterns that form a jagged circle. The tattoo doesn’t look professional by any means. In fact, it looks as though someone branded him with an iron rod then dumped ink into the wound.

“Whoa. Does it mean anything?” I extend my hand forward to touch the tattoo, but he quickly jerks his shirt down.

“I don’t know if it does or not, since I can’t really remember how it got there,” he says coldly. He collects his pencil and returns his book to his lap. “And you promised me you wouldn’t ask questions.”

He begins working on the assignment again, leaving me with so many questions I feel like I’m going to combust. There’s so much I don’t know about him, and so much I want to know.

“Can I just learn one tiny thing about you?” I clasp my hands in front of me. “Pretty please. It doesn’t have to be about the tattoo.” When he sighs, I add, “Okay, I’ll tell you something that no one else knows about me first.” I deliberate what to divulge. I’m not much of a secret keeper, but there is one thing I never tell anyone. “Okay, so no one knows this, but I totally suffer from stage fright, which is a big, huge problem since I want to be the lead singer in a fucking awesome rock band one day.” I pat him on the arm. “See, not so bad. Now it’s your turn.”

He stares at me with uncertainty.

“Just one thing.” I hold a finger up. “That’s not so bad, right?”

He considers my proposal, and then in the softest voice admits, “I’m terrified of the dark.” His gaze drops to the scars on his hand.

“See, that wasn’t so bad.” I try to remain cheery even though he looks absolutely horrified that he just admitted that secret to me. “And now I know what to get you for your birthday.”