I tip my head to the window behind me. “Do you trust them?”

She lowers her head like trust means defeat. “Yes.”

“Then let us worry about helping with what you can’t cover when you go legit.”

“You’re asking me to have more faith in you than I’ve ever had in anyone.”

I am. “Isn’t that what faith is? Believing in something without seeing it first?”

“You suck, Logan.”

“Oh, well.”

I ease onto the car next to Abby and she knocks her knee against mine. “Isaiah’s going to kick our asses for touching his car.”

“I’m not scared of him.”

She half laughs. “You aren’t scared of anything. I’m not sure you even know fear.”

“Used to say the same thing about you.”

Abby raises her face to the deep blue sky above. “I couldn’t afford fear, not for a long time, but being shot...the fear caught up. But it’s not dying that I’m scared of.”

“What are you scared of?”

“Of still breathing but being dead inside. I think that’s a fate worse than death. I was already halfway there when I walked into the car shop to find you and Rachel hanging with Isaiah. I knew then I should have walked away, but I was tired of being numb.”

We’re silent and it feels right and wrong. Right in that her admission deserves the respect of thought, wrong because Abby deserves more than to be the only one putting herself out there.

“A few years after being first diagnosed with diabetes, things went bad. My kidneys freaked and I ended up in the hospital. I was scared then.” Terrified. “When I was better, one of my mom’s boyfriends took me rappelling and I loved the rush. Loved feeling alive. Death scared me so much that I like it when my heart beats too hard for too long. Reminds me I’m still breathing.”

I glance over at her. “I was also scared when I heard shots in the alley, saw you lying face-down on the ground. Death scared me. Losing you scared me. The idea of losing you still scares me.”

This time we both pretend the sidewalk is interesting. One eighteen-year-old and one seventeen-year-old. Both dealing with adult shit. Both having the emotional capacity of children. Wanting to belong to each other, but unsure how to navigate emotions.

“Think we did this to ourselves on purpose?” Abby asks.

“Did what?”

“Became the things we were terrified of becoming. You are always trying to cheat death with the crazy stuff you do. I followed in my father’s footsteps and allowed no one in for such a long time.”

“We’re both too strong for that. We haven’t become them, Abby. We’re mocking them. I do crazy shit because I am alive and I enjoy feeling it. The adrenaline pumping in my veins, the air in my lungs, the heat of my skin and yours when I’m kissing you. And you’re not dead inside. You’ve loved too many people for that.”

Abby’s eyebrows raise in doubt.

“Think about it—Linus kept pressuring you to give us up.” I gesture to our group inside currently laughing at something Noah is saying. “That in there, those friendships, that’s dangerous. The good friendships, they’re more potent than an atomic bomb. None of us would let you feel dead inside.”

Abby rocks her knee against mine again and sends me an under-the-eyelash gaze that causes my blood to warm. “Thanks for that.”

“For what?”

“For everything.” Abby flexes her fingers like she’s about to compose on a piano. “I don’t know how to walk away. In all the rules and pieces of advice my father gave me over the years, he never taught me how to give two weeks’ notice to a drug lord. I mean is there paperwork? Should I bring flowers? Do I have to train my replacement? Create a training manual? If I have Kinko’s print and bind it, does that make them an accomplice to organized crime? I mean, how exactly do these things work?”

My lips tilt up as Abby begins talking her nonsense. A conscious stream of things that make sense yet don’t. It’s become a comfort to me, just like our pretend past, just like I’ve become addicted to holding her at night.

“How can I help?”

Abby’s lips thin out and she goes serious. “I need to see my dad.”

Abby

Logan and Isaiah stand with me as I wait for my number to pop up on the screen. I’m the only one who will be allowed in. Dad has a list of people he’s handpicked to visit him, and I’m on that short list even though I’m under eighteen. Mac’s my legal guardian and he signed a notarized letter that gives me permission for the jacked-up meet and greet without an adult.

Other numbers continue to flash on the screen and the people are ushered back to where they’ll be patted down. After that they’ll walk through a metal detector and then be assigned a table where the inmate they want to meet will be.

Lots of suck parts of these visitations, but for me, especially coming unannounced, Dad can refuse this meeting. I’ve never done this before, showed up without Denny making arrangements first, and I mentally will my number to appear, to prove Dad misses me.

Because Isaiah’s supercrazy about keeping his back safe in a crowded environment, we stand by the wall and he methodically swivels his head like an owl’s as he mentally tallies the people surrounding us.

“The criminals are the ones behind the big fat wall,” I mutter.

“All the same,” Isaiah replies.