“Fucking bush,” I growled.

“Shhhh,” she said as she ran to check the lock on her door. “What are you doing here?”

“Can’t sleep. Dad’s drinking. Breaking whatever the hell’s left. Wanted a look at you.” I take her in and holy shit, I never thought she slept in that sort of sleep gear. Tiny shorts. Loose T-shirt hanging over one shoulder.

“And you came to me because . . . you needed a teddy bear?” she asked. “If I were ever to be considered a bear, I’d be more like a grizzly.”

“Then, Grizzly, you’ll have to do.” I kicked off my shoes and slid into her bed, pulling her in with me.

She laughed lightly and tried to stifle the sound. She never laughs, this girl, but she laughs—with me.

“I couldn’t sleep either,” she whispered suddenly up at me, tracing circles on my forearm. Right where I have my tattoo now. Fuck, she killed me. She’s always been a closed little box, Pandora, and not prone to saying much at all about how she feels. She can be bleeding to death and be asked if she’s in pain, and this girl? She’d probably shrug even when it’s killing her.

I get her. Somehow, I get her. And she gets me. That night, I clutched her tight, and within seconds, she dozed off in my arms. She used to trust me enough to do that. Lie asleep, pressed close to me. I set my phone alarm for 5 a.m. so her mother wouldn’t catch us. Then I stared at her ceiling and wondered if she thought of me whenever she stared up at that twirling fan. Or if she thought of me at all the way I thought of her when in bed.

My mother died when I was just three. I remember how she smelled, and felt, but not her face. I kind of hate that I can’t remember her face. Hate even more the fact that my father didn’t cope well and got rid of any pictures before I had a say in it.

When my dad was caught dealing, the government was quick to take the cars, the house. We moved in with Uncle Tom until the trial, and he was worse than Dad. Alcohol is all the man knew. My friends? Interesting to see how they scattered once my dad’s face was plastered on the evening news.

In a day I went from being the most popular little shit in private school to being the loner at the table. Everything, poof, in the wink of an eye.

It felt surreal. Unreal.

Couldn’t sleep, eat, because I somehow knew what would happen next.

I dreaded it, even while I waited for the last shoe to drop. That last drop to spill the glass of water that would drown me. Tighten the last fucking notch of a noose that hanged me. I kept waiting for the one thing I had left—the one I most wanted—to go poof as well.

When your life does a one-eighty on you, you develop fears. And I feared losing her more than I feared anything. Hell, I feared I already had.

At 5:02 a.m. I hadn’t had a wink of sleep, but there she was, and all I wanted was to make sure she was there for me. Digging into my pocket, I curled my fingers around my mother’s ring. The only thing I could save. Because I’d hid it. Legally, I shouldn’t even have had the ring. But it was all I had of my mother, and I wanted my girl to have it. The next day I took her out to the docks and gave it to her before we left the yacht we stole into.

The way she’d kissed me . . .

Guess every time she kissed me back like that, I kidded myself that she loved me too.

One day, months later, the day after Dad was sentenced, it happened.

I found out that the girl I wanted to love me like I wanted to breathe . . . could never be for me.

I had to go. I left, hating every step I took.

No booze, no prostitute, no girl, nothing could numb me enough for me to stop, just fucking stop, needing her.

Not even a song.

Drunk, I poured it out months later, needing to blame someone for my shitty life. So I blamed the source of my pain. And my new friends, the Vikings? Hell, they embraced the anger in it, the irony of mixing it with Mozart. I sing it now, every day it seems, and I could sing it a million times more, but I still won’t believe that I wouldn’t kill for her to love me.

For a fucking minute.

A second even.

To just give me a fucking kiss and tell me that at least back in those days, she loved me.

NINE

DANCING TO THEIR TUNE

Pandora

I wake up early, and the choreographer waits for me in the hotel ballroom, along with eleven other dancers. Letitta is also there, watching with a smirk as I come in. I’m coffee-less, humorless, and sleepless. I don’t even smirk back.

I got no sleep last night. I kept expecting you-know-who to come to my bed. No, not expecting. Almost . . . anticipating. Sad, but true. I kept remembering when we were seventeen, and he used to slip up the trellis into my room, and I’d be waiting—pretending I wasn’t waiting—my heart leaping when he tapped lightly on the window. I’d let him in in a hurry, and he’d take off his shirt, his shoes, slipping into bed with me with just his jeans on, and I’d smell him and press close, wanting to say that since my dad died he’d been the only one able to make me forget the pain. Wanting to tell him that it hurt to know my mom was, day and night, preparing her case to take his dad away from him too . . .

“It’s all right, he did it to himself,” he whispered when I told him I was sorry, again. But he sounded sad. How could he not be sad?

And then I’d fall asleep, even as I fought not to, too comfortable with his smell, and warmth, and the way he stroked his hand long and lazy down my back. Then I’d wake alone, seeing the dent in his pillow and the slightly open window where he’d slipped out, just in time before my mother came to wake me for school.

“Close the window, it’s chilly!” she’d scold.

“You’re like a grandma already,” I’d grumble.

“That is so disrespectful, Pandora.”

“I’m sorry,” I’d mumble and disappear into the shower, letting the water run over my body, already loathing the day ahead. I knew what would happen, because the same had happened yesterday, and the day before that too.

I’d see Mackenna from afar. He’d look at me too. We’d pretend we hadn’t just held hands, or slept with my body twined like a pretzel around his long, ever-growing one. I’d hang out with my tiny circle of friends, feeling him guarding me like a wolf from the table crowded with wannabes, but after the hearing, only the real rebels with troubled families hung out with him. They all waited for his dad’s trial and sentence—but Kenna?

Kenna had already been “tried” by everyone in school. Everyone but me. We’d pass each other in the hall, both of us straining to bump shoulders.

We’d go late to class, our methods different every time. Sometimes he’d tie his shoelaces at a tortoise’s pace as the halls emptied. Other times, I’d drop my books at the exact moment he passed so he could drop to his haunches close to me and slip my books into my backpack. It was stupid, really, but the day was torture if I didn’t exchange at least one word. One word, with him. “Hey,” he’d say softly, only one side of his mouth smiling.

“Hey. Thanks,” I’d say, when really I meant, I want to be with you.

And his silver eyes would say in quiet frustration, “Why can’t I fucking be with you?”

Every couple walking down the halls holding hands killed me. I’d never miss the clench of his jaw, the coiled energy as I knew he wondered why we couldn’t have that. “My mother,” I’d explain. She wouldn’t understand. She’d been watching me like a hawk since she’d seen him walk me home. My mother would ruin it all.

“Yeah, I know, I’m just frustrated,” he’d whisper in my ear, his breath like a soft wind as he hung my backpack over my shoulder and rubbed his thumb on the skin where my T-shirt pulled, stealing that touch . . . and my heart with it. “Come to me tonight,” I blurted out.

“Always,” he said.

Always . . .

Six years—a little more, actually—and I still remember that Always. How, when he became aroused, his eyes—sometimes without warning: over a look, a smile, a brush, a pair of shorts I wore—looked like dirty silver, and I could never again look at dirty silver without a pang in my chest. Mackenna isn’t that boy anymore. And I’m not that girl, waiting in my bed, eagerly watching my window. But last night, I felt very much like her.

I felt exactly like her. Eager, hopeful, scared to be hopeful. Vulnerable.

He’s been the most powerful source of pain in my life, and my survival instinct rears up stronger than ever when he’s near. Every part of him is a threat—his voice, his kiss, our past, my own heart. I was so sure I’d gotten rid of my heart, but he makes me so aware that it’s still here, inside me somewhere. It’s alive when he’s near, and it screams, “Danger . . .”

Now I’m grumpy because he didn’t seek me out, like I—even if I hate myself for wishing it—still wished he would.

He’s managed to make me restless, to the point where I considered taking my clonazepam at midnight. But I only have two more pills, and what if we need to fly again? I’d die of cardiac arrest, if the stupid plane didn’t fall on its own.

Groggily I pour a steaming cup of coffee from a small buffet table on the side, sipping it as I study the two girls at the front of the room. One dark-haired, and one blonde.