Me? Who gave a rat’s ass about me? I was fine. All I could think about was him and his guitar. He’d told me how special that guitar was and I knew what it meant to him.

“I’m fine. Are you okay?”

“I’ll live.” He looked like he was about to cry.

“I’m so sorry, Zeke.”

The floor shifted as I stood up and went to him. I reached out for his hand and he didn’t pull away. Brushing his hair from his sweaty face, his already swelling eye was turning black. He flinched when I ran my finger across the bruise.

“Don’t be, you didn’t do anything wrong. I should’ve stood up to him years ago.” He sat on the couch and the broken guitar fell to his feet. “What are you doing here?”

I sat beside him and laid my hand on his knee. He looked down at my hand and then looked back at me.

“I came to tell you I was sorry. I didn’t mean what I said the other night. I just didn’t want you to get arrested.”

The side of his mouth tilted up and he blew out a deep breath.

“You could’ve just texted me that.”

I went in for the kill.

“But then I wouldn’t have been able to see you.”

He turned to me and his eyes took in my face. Reaching up, he laid his palm against my sore cheek. Anger filled his eyes and he breathed hard, making his nostrils flare.

“He hit you. I’m so sorry I let him hit you.” His thumb caressed what I was sure was already a forming bruise.

“You didn’t let him do anything.” I covered his hand with mine. “Do you guys always fight like that?”

He shook his head and closed his eyes.

“No. I usually never fight back. I promised my mom on her death bed that I wouldn’t fight him.”

“But you did today.” I stated the obvious.

Deep brown eyes took me in as he brought his other hand up and laid it on my other cheek.

“When he hit you, I wanted to kill him.”

His confession said so much to me. I leaned in to kiss him, but his dad moaned like he was getting up. Zeke jumped from the couch and pulled me up with him.

“You need to get out of here. When he wakes up it’s not going to be good.”

“I’m not leaving you.”

And I wasn’t. I refused to leave him in a place where he wasn’t safe.

“Fine, let me grab some stuff. Stand by the door and don’t move. If he gets up, get out of here and go sit in my car, okay?”

I nodded my agreement and went to stand by the door while Zeke ran to his room and started throwing random things into a bag. A piece of wood on the floor caught my eye. I reached down and picked it up. It was the part of his guitar with his mom’s signature.

Quickly, I dug through the pieces of his broken guitar. As if it were fate, I found four quotes that were still whole. The edges were broken and jagged, but still whole. I collected them and put them in my pocket. I was sure there was something I could do with the pieces.

Zeke came back out of his room and grabbed my hand.

“Let’s get out of here.”

Once we were outside, he threw his stuff in the back of his car and turned to me.

“Whose car?” he nodded over to my car.

“It’s mine, kind of.”

“Good. Follow me.”

I nodded and turned to walk away, but he softly grabbed my wrist and pulled me back to him. He ran his fingers through my hair and then leaned and planted a soft kiss on my lips.

“Seriously, snowflake, I need you.”

Seventeen

Zeke

Go back to your shitty little trailer park. I wanted to see if what they said about you was true, and now that I see it isn’t, I’m done messing around with you.

Patience’s words bounced around my head the entire ride home. The look in her eyes wasn’t right, but I couldn’t tell if she meant it or not. Either way, I was done. She was right. We were from two different worlds and I needed to stay in my zone.

Once I got home, I went straight to bed, but I couldn’t sleep. My thoughts were a scrambled mess. Part of me wanted to go kidnap Patience and keep her safe from her asshole of a father, and the other part of me knew that I should just drop it and hope that she was okay.

When I closed my eyes, all I could see was her face in ecstasy and the way she looked after we kissed. I’d never had a woman look at me with so much emotion in her eyes. I’d also never had someone cut me so deep with their words. I’m not sure when she got that capability, but I was positive it happened during our kiss.