I’m mad. Shaking mad. So mad, I shouldn’t open my mouth, but I do, and I scream at the top of my lungs. “I obviously can take care of myself.”

“How the f**k was I to know that?”

The car behind us blares his horn when West cuts him off.

“I hate you,” I mutter.

“Right back at you.”

He pulls into the neighborhood and before me is the spot where our worlds collided. One second earlier or later and maybe I could have avoided Conner and his friend. One step in the other direction and West would have never almost plowed me over.

Nausea disorients me and I lay a hand over my stomach. Is this all we are? Continual actions and reactions? No control over our futures? One pink slip and we lose our house and I lose my father? One decision to date the wrong guy and I lose Jax and Kaden? One step off the wrong curb and my life is entangled with a stranger’s?

If that’s true, then life is one pathetic and sick game.

West eases into the lot and shifts the SUV in Park. “We can’t leave it like this.”

“I know.” A pause on my part. “I don’t hate you.” I fidget with one lone long fingernail. I’ve never been able to grow them long or figured out how to paint them properly. I totally stink at all things girl. “That was mean to say.”

“I don’t hate you, either, and, trust me, I’ve been told worse.” He releases a breath. “I’m in this, Haley, whether you want me or not.”

The gray day makes the dismal shopping plaza more depressing. A woman too thin and barely dressed hauls a crying toddler by her arm, practically breaking it. The child trips over a curb and the woman drags her against the blacktop. I hate this place. Not West. Just my life.

“I keep searching for a way to fix this so you can be free and I can’t think of one.” Not when he insists on continually butting in. “I’m not looking to argue again, but can you please tell me why? I’m a stranger. I could be a serial killer or I could collect road kill and turn it into stuffed animals or own two million porcelain dolls and hang their decapitated heads from my ceiling—”

“The dolls would creep me out.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Just the dolls?”

West smiles again, like he did outside school, and that sweet, sweet sight causes me to smile in return. “I have a high threshold for creepy.”

I laugh and the high feeling plummets when I search for the last time I laughed before today. Last month? Six months ago? Years? “My point is, you don’t know me, yet you volunteered to become a modern-day gladiator without an ounce of training.”

“Cool. Does that mean I’ll get a sword?”

“I’m being serious! This whole situation is utterly and completely serious!”

“You need to learn how to chill.” West exhales, then slides his hand over the steering wheel. “I don’t know why I’m doing this.”

“Please?”

He’s silent, but it’s the type of silence that tells me he’s sorting his thoughts. My dad, before he was laid off, had that same expression whenever we had a discussion. Dad always answered me and I have no doubt West will, too...if I grant him time.

“I’m involved now because that Conner kid hit you.”

My stomach sinks. “West...” God, I hate admitting it out loud. “I hit him first.” Because he wouldn’t relent against West.

He holds up his hand. “He hit you. I don’t care if you backed over him with my Escalade two hundred times. It’s not okay to hit a girl. Besides, you had my back. I don’t forget that type of thing.” His lips slant. “Granted, I’m usually saying this to a guy.”

There’s more. I can see a pain etched on his face...in his eyes.

“You said earlier you couldn’t live with the idea that you failed. What did you mean?”

“We all have demons.” He stares at the bar situated at the end of the strip mall. “How about we leave it at that.”

“Do you have any idea what you’ve walked yourself into?”

“In two months I’m going to be in some tournament. For all I know, I’ll be throwing knives at this kid and he could be tossing them back at me.”

“No knives. Though that could be faster and less painful.”

“Good to know.”

The school bus rumbles on the road behind us. “I need to get home. Can I explain everything tomorrow at lunch? Then we can devise a plan to keep you alive.”

“Sounds like a date.” West puts the SUV in gear and I give him directions to my uncle’s. He leans against his door as he drives and watches the road intently. Something tells me he’s not focused on the road as much as he’s trying to digest the world he’s thrown himself into.

West stops in front of the box house. “What are you trained in?”

The instinct is to divulge nothing because my fighting days are long over.

“I saw the damage you did to Conner. You’re trained in something.”

If West is going to survive, I’ve got to wade through the charred and ruined bridges I’ve burned and find a way to rebuild them. Might as well start with the truth. “Muay Thai.”

“And that is?”

“Kickboxing.”

West releases a paralyzing grin. “Holy shit, my girlfriend’s a kickboxer.”

I sort of giggle, but it’s so halfhearted it falls flat. Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined I’d be sitting in such an expensive car with such a gorgeous guy. Taking a page from Marissa’s book, I tuck my hair behind my ear and suddenly care what I look like.