Chapter Five

Phoenix

Selfish asshole, that was me. I should have gone home. I should have deleted her number after we ran into Davis in the park, but man, when she looked at me like that—like she thought I was something amazing instead of a piece of shit—I couldn’t help myself. I couldn’t leave.

I couldn’t stop myself from touching her either, though I was working damn hard at making sure it was nothing more than holding hands or my arm around her.

So maybe humping her head with my hand wasn’t exactly keeping it cool, but I’d been dying to touch her hair since the minute I’d met her, so fucking sue me for going for it. She didn’t seem to mind, which was insane. Why she wasn’t terrified of me by that point, I couldn’t figure out. No self-preservation at all.

Except since it was working in my favor, I couldn’t exactly fault her.

When she started to doze, pressed against me, I shook her hand a little. “Hey. Let’s go to bed. You’ll have a headache tomorrow if you sleep like this.”

In the glowing light of the TV she glanced up at me, her eyes glassy and wide. She smiled. “Okay.”

The urge to kiss her was so strong I felt my temple pulse as I clenched my free fist, digging nails into the flesh of my palm. I couldn’t do that to her. I couldn’t drag her down to my level.

“Come on,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady, even. I led her down the hallway to her little room and she stumbled along behind me.

The bedroom was small, cell size. When I stepped inside, I felt the tension inside me getting ready to explode. The room surrounded me, trapped me, and I felt guilty for grabbing at her in my sleep that morning, for taking advantage of her niceness, for exposing her to a guy like Davis.

For enjoying spending time with her, for wanting her so bad I could practically taste her on my tongue.

She crawled onto the bed still in her sundress and peeled back the sheet. Once under it, she settled down onto her pillow with a sigh. Her hand reached out for mine. “Aren’t you coming to bed?”

One, two, three small breaths out nice and slow. “In a minute,” I told her, and my voice sounded completely normal. How I had no idea. “I need to take a piss.” I leaned forward and brushed her hair back off her forehead. When my hand started to shake I pulled it back.

“’kay.” Her eyes were already closed.

I retreated slowly, trying not to make too much noise. I eased her door almost all the way shut, then went into the living room. Even though I wanted to punch the shit out of something, there was nothing to punch. Nothing to throw. So I did push-ups, at a grueling pace, three reps of thirty each. Then I went up and down the stairs twenty times, grateful for the old, dingy carpet so Robin couldn’t hear me.

The doctors could take their meds and shove them up their ass. They’d made me take them in jail, and I hadn’t felt any different. Intermittent explosive disorder? Go fuck yourself.

The only thing wrong with me was that my mom was an asshole and I’d been left on my own too much. Nothing else.

Someday I would fall in love like every other idiot did at one time or another. I just couldn’t let it be with Robin.

But I knew how to control my emotions. I always had.

I went back upstairs, peeled off my shirt, and eased myself into bed beside Robin, still breathing hard. She was out cold, and I lay there and let my muscle fatigue become the focus of my thoughts. The way my shoulders burned, the strain in my calves. The pain crowded out the other thoughts, and I finally relaxed.

Careful not to move too much, I turned my head and watched her sleep. I hadn’t had a lot of opportunity to sleep next to a girl. In high school my girlfriend had stayed over a few times when my mother wasn’t home, but her parents had busted her and that had been the end of that. Angel had stayed with me once, but she had gotten pissed at me for taking too much space and had kicked me in the shins hard before stomping off to sleep on the couch.

But Robin seemed to like me in her space. She shifted toward me on the couch when we watched TV, she had turned toward me on the blanket in the park, and in bed she curled her legs up and tucked her hands under her chin, but always facing me.

I studied her face in the dark, wanting to memorize it, to sketch it later.

She was beautiful. She was naive.

She felt like my reward for surviving jail.

I stayed awake for an hour watching her, before drifting into oblivion.

* * *

Another nightmare shattered my sleep. In this one I was watching my mother being raped by Iggy, half conscious from the beating he’d given her and from the drugs. Her body moved sluggish with each thrust, his grunts making my stomach roil, but there was a cell wall between me and her, so I couldn’t help her.

Then it wasn’t my mom anymore.

It was Robin, and her eyes were dead of any of the sweetness I’d seen, even void of the sadness she had shown me. They were just empty. Black holes. There was nothing there as that bastard abused her body in the most violating way possible.

I pounded on the cell walls, yelling, shaking the bars until my throat was hoarse and my hands were bleeding. I wanted to explode outside of myself and kill him for hurting her.

I had done this to her. I had killed her soul.

Then suddenly I fell through as the glass wall dissolved into nothing and I was free, but Robin wasn’t there anymore . . .

Waking up with a start as I fell, I half sat up. I must have made a sound because Robin jerked awake, too.

“Shit,” I muttered, heart pounding, sweat all over the back of my neck, the image of her still floating in front of my eyes. “God.”

“Are you okay?” Her hand stroked my arm, then my back, her touch warm and small and caring.

And suddenly I didn’t give a fuck that I was bad for her. She was letting me be there, right? She was offering comfort and I was going to take it, because I couldn’t stand the way she had stared at me in my dream, like I wasn’t there. Like I didn’t exist.

“Yeah,” I whispered, wiping my forehead as I eased myself back down onto the mattress. “I’m fine.”

She touched my cheek and pushed my hair back. “Are you sure?”

Nodding, I shifted closer to her so that our faces were aligned. She was so beautiful, so sweet, so trusting. I ached with want, the need to touch her greater than my self-control. I needed to see her smile, see her willingness to kiss me. Me. Her eyes, still heavy with sleep, darkened as I watched her, running my fingers down her cheek to her lips.

She knew what I was about to do because her mouth drifted open, so that when I kissed her, she kissed me back. And of course, just to torture me, it felt as good as I had imagined. God. Those lips were plump and soft, and nothing had ever felt so simple and good and important. She gave a little sigh that had me pulling her leg up onto my hip so we could be closer, my other hand buried in her thick hair.

Robin was safe, I wasn’t in a cell, and the kiss was perfect, our bodies pressed against each other, my tongue darting in between her lips. She opened for me without hesitation, and her hips started to rock against mine. Her skin, her breath, were warm, and my hands felt big, covering so much territory on her body at once. Our breathing got heavier, and I was inching under her dress, endorphins or whatever the hell they were called shutting down my ability to think rationally.

Which is exactly how we were when her roommate flung open the door and said, “Robin, sweetie, you awake—oh shit, sorry!”

Robin broke off our kiss and yanked her leg off of me, slumberous eyes now full alert. “Kylie?” she breathed, rolling onto her back and gripping her chest. “Oh my God, you scared the shit out of me.”

“Sorry. I didn’t know you had, um, a friend here.” The blonde in the doorway eyed me with a naked curiosity that annoyed me. She started twirling her hair around her finger, and her hip came out as she leaned on the doorframe.

Shoving my hair out of my eye, I sat up, giving her a long look that hopefully would send her scurrying away. A little privacy wasn’t too much to ask for, was it? Christ. Since she had just interrupted what was shaping up to be a fucking awesome moment.

Her eyes widened. “We can catch up later.”

“What are you doing?” A guy’s voice came booming down the hall, then a head appeared behind her. “What is going on here?” He took in Robin and me in bed, and he looked appalled. “Phoenix? Phoenix Sullivan?”

Fuck. I knew this guy. It was Nathan, Tyler’s best friend from middle school on. I’d always thought he was a bit of a tool. “Nathan? What’s up, man?” I gave him a casual head nod, reaching for Robin’s hand.

Her cheeks were stained pink with embarrassment, and she had curled up into a ball.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” he asked me.

None of his business. I shrugged. “Hanging out with Robin.”

“She’s not just some chick you can screw around with.” Nathan looked and sounded angry.

Robin made a small sound in the back of her throat, but otherwise she didn’t say a word. She looked like she was fighting the urge to cry. She didn’t seem anything like the girl I’d just spent the last forty-eight hours with. She looked like the girl I’d met in Tyler’s living room, tenting herself inside her T-shirt. She was literally tucking her legs into her body right beside me. What the hell?

“Hey,” I said, getting pissed off right back at him. “Mind your own business. You’re embarrassing Robin. You don’t know a goddamn thing about what is going on here, but I do think you know I’m not someone to fuck with.” I’d mop the goddamn floor with him and his baseball scholarship. Thought he was someone because he was going to college. He could fuck the bat he swung to get there.

Since Robin’s hand was tucked away, I couldn’t squeeze it, but I did touch her hip when I stood up. I figured if I moved toward Nathan, he would back up. Which was exactly what he did.

“Does Tyler know?” he asked.

“Does Tyler know what?” My cousin appeared in the doorway, too, and when he saw me, the smile fell off his face. “Seriously? Phoenix, Jesus.”

I stepped forward, but they all stayed crowded in the doorway. “Back up!” I demanded, irritated. “You’re embarrassing her and it’s really starting to make me angry.”

Tyler knew well enough that angry was never a good look on me, so he tapped Nathan and jerked his head toward the living room. Once they cleared the doorway, I turned back to Robin and said, “It’s all good, don’t worry. Be back in a second.” I pulled the door closed behind me so she could recover or whatever. She was starting to freak me out. She looked so upset, way more than the situation merited. We weren’t even naked or anything. It was just a kiss. Well, kisses. It shouldn’t be that big of a deal.

Other than the fact that I shouldn’t have done it, but I didn’t think she really understood that. This was something else.

“Is there where you’ve been the last two days?” Tyler asked me. A pale redhead put her hand on his arm, like she wanted to calm him down.

“Yeah.”

“What about me saying it was a bad idea did you not understand?”

“The why.”

Tyler clenched his fists. “Dude, it’s like you want to screw yourself over. Why do you do that?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. We’re just hanging out. It’s not a big deal.” But that was a lie. It was a big deal. I knew it was. It was a big deal in that they all knew just as well as I did that she was above my reach, but more important even than that, it was a big deal because I really, really liked her.

The door opened, and Robin appeared, arms across her chest. “Why do any of you care?” she asked in a small voice. Then she went to the redhead and hugged her. “Hey, Rory, welcome back. I missed you.”

Tyler got a sheepish look, but Nathan was still shooting me looks of instant death.

Then Robin went to the blonde and hugged her, too, hard, though she shifted out of the way when Nathan tried to hug her.

I was getting a bad feeling that I really wanted to ignore. “So is this move-in day?” I asked.

The blonde nodded. “Yeppers. I’m Kylie.”

“Phoenix, Tyler’s cousin. You need help unloading stuff?”

“Oh, God, yes, I have so much crap.”

She wasn’t lying. Her car was crammed with boxes, and we unloaded the car in an uneasy silence except for Kylie, who babbled like she had no clue she was with a group of pissed-off people. When both her and Rory’s stuff was in the apartment, my cousin leveled a look at me. “Can I give you a ride back to the house?”