My lungs collapse and my fingers tug at the neckline of my shirt. "No, they're in there. They have to be."

"Not here." Kaden shakes the bag again so that it crackles. "It took Mom two months to earn enough for the pills. How could you lose them? Dad needs them."

"I know," I snap and throw my hands over my eyes. "I know."

I bang the back of my head against the wall. I lost Dad's medication. My family's only hope of getting out of this G.o.dforsaken place. That's why the guys left. I didn't lose the meds. They stole them. The muscles beneath my right cheek begin to pulsate. Tears burn my eyes and my chest becomes heavy. I swore I'd never fight again and I did. I swore I'd never be hit again. And I have. This is the penance for breaking that promise. G.o.d, I'm worthless.

"Go, Kaden," says Jax. "It's happened and can't be undone."

Kaden disappears down the stairs and Jax crouches next to me. My cheeks feel numb against the warmth of the house. The skin there tingles and so do my fingers. Jax grabs them and begins to rub. "We need to find you a jacket."

"You don't have one," I mumble blankly and flinch when regret cuts deep. Jax's hands pause against mine and we make fleeting eye contact.

"I'm sorry." I broke a cardinal rule. Kaden and I never mention what Jax doesn't have.

"It's okay." He ma.s.sages warmth back into my fingers. "I can take frostbite. You can't."

I offer a weak smile. "I'm tougher than I look."

"Yeah," he says under his breath then releases my hands. "You are."

"I lost the meds," I announce as if he wasn't part of the earlier conversation. "I lost Dad's pills." Why do I keep s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up?

"You had a s.h.i.t ton of errands and not enough time. You ran home and they probably fell out of the bag. It could have happened to any of us. If you're going to live here, you've got to learn to let stuff go. Otherwise, you'll go insane."

I meet his green eyes at the word insane. What if I'm already there? What if I can't take much more? I don't ask those questions because I see the same ones forming in his eyes.

My cousin glances away. "We covered for you. Said you came in through the back door and came straight here."

"Thanks. Why did he buy it?" Typically we have to present ourselves to The Dictator like soldiers in his make-believe war.

Jax scratches at the thin three-inch scar streaking across his forehead. He's chosen a skater look today, and his hair lies flat against his head. "We told him you had an accident."

My stomach drops. I'm not going to like this. "An accident?"

He avoids eye contact as he absently gestures with his hand. "Girl problems. Blood...in spots...on clothes." Jax bolts up. "We're not discussing this anymore. We covered for you. He bought it. That's all you need to know."

Heat finally races to my cheeks. Freaking kill me now. "Thanks."

"No problem." Jax looks at me again; then he's really looking at me. Like p.i.s.sed-off looking at me. "What the f.u.c.k?"

Instinctively, my fingers go to my cheek and I regret it the moment Jax's fists clench.

"Did you get jumped?" he demands. "Is that how you lost the meds?"

"Jax!" his dad bellows from the bottom of the stairs. "Come here!"

"Haley," Jax says, ignoring his father.

"Jax!" This time the gla.s.s of the old window shakes with his voice and I shudder.

"Go!" I say to him, preferring not to be the reason the two of them get into a screaming match. "Please."

He points at me. "This ain't over." Jax turns and, like Kaden, bends as he crosses the room.

I brush my fingers against my sensitive cheek. "Jax."

He hesitates near the door.

"I can't go down to dinner like this and my makeup's downstairs. Can you help?"

Jax nods. "Consider it done."

West "I think you're dead."

My eyes flash open and I scramble up when I come face-to-face with hazel eyes and long dark hair. A quick scan of the room and I discover I'm on a couch in a gray concrete unfinished bas.e.m.e.nt. A single bulb lights the area. Behind me are a washer and dryer. In front of me is a bed and to the side, a TV. Last night, I took a hot shower and crashed.

I scrub my hands over my face. This is bad. Last night happened. It wasn't a nightmare.

"d.a.m.n, I guessed wrong. You're alive." Near where my head had been, Abby falls back from her knees to her b.u.t.t. "I can't decide if that's good or bad news."

"Screw you." My muscles are stiff. Sore. I hesitantly stretch to see if anything's broken.

Abby presses a hand over her mouth and mock gasps. "Your mother would be appalled by your manners. Tsk. Tsk. I believe pleases and thank-yous are in order." She loses the fake sweetness. "Even if you are slumming it, Rich Boy."

She kicks my shin as she stands. "Get up. I've got work to do and babysitting is not on the list."

Memories of last night crash into my mind. More importantly of the girl who possibly rescued me from dying of exposure on the street. "Is Haley okay?"

Being a d.a.m.ned loser last night, I couldn't muster enough energy or self-respect to drive her home.

"She was the last time I saw her. Are you dating her?"

"No."

"f.u.c.king her?"

I glare at Abby, but I can't throw too much anger into it. She also saved my a.s.s. I pop my neck to the side, hoping to expel the annoying insecurity over Haley's safety.

"Good. Rumor has it she's decent. She deserves better."

She probably does. Haley's probably one of those dinner, a movie, roses type of girls who take a month to work up to the first kiss. Me-not my style. "What time is it?"

"Too early for my clients to be awake, but they will be soon." Abby pulls a cell phone out of her back pocket. "Get your a.s.s moving. This isn't the Holiday Inn."

I'm 30 percent curious over the word clients, then realize I don't give a s.h.i.t. "No continental breakfast?"

"How about you bite me?"

I actually chuckle; then I roll my neck and circle my arms. How the h.e.l.l did my sister get involved with her? The nonmedical a.s.sessment says I'm bruised. Nothing more. "Where am I?"

"Isaiah's foster parents' house."

d.a.m.n. I rea.s.sess the room, searching for the b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

"Don't worry," she says as she scrolls down the screen. "He stayed with Rachel at the hospital last night since he doesn't have school today."

That's right. Today's Sat.u.r.day. "We."

"What?"

"You said 'he' as if you don't go to school, or did you lie about being a junior?"

"Meh, I consider school optional, but I am a junior."

"So everything you told Rachel, besides what grade you're in, was a lie?"

Abby's lips form a smirk. "I don't lie to Rachel. But yeah, you can a.s.sume anything that comes out of my mouth to anyone but her or Isaiah is a different rendition of the truth. Maybe also to Isaiah's friend Logan. I like Logan. He reminds me of hot queso and I like queso."

The veins beneath my scalp begin to pulse. "So you lied about my mother."

"No, that was the truth. I do know why she goes to the bar once a month. Third Friday of the month to be exact. Comes around seven in the evening. Sound familiar?"

My shoulders slump forward. s.h.i.t, Abby does know. "Why does she go there?"

"They sell awesome snow cones. The red one won a blue ribbon in the state fair last year."

The pounding intensifies. This girl is like one of those d.a.m.ned flies that swarm your head and your food. "Let me guess-you're lying."

She winks. "You're catching on fast, and here I pegged you for stupid."

A muscle in my jaw twitches. I can't stand this girl, but she did give me a place to crash, so I watch my manners and change the subject. "Did he tell you to bring me here?"

Figures the a.s.shole would want something to hold over me: help with a bad situation, then he'll squeeze me for something. Money, drugs. It's gotta be the type of angle he used to snare Rachel. Why else would she have been around a guy like him?

"Isaiah's initial response was to let you bleed out in the street, but then he got sentimental and thought Rachel would be sad if you died, so he called and asked me to take care of you. I told him Rachel would've gotten over you and that we could make her happy if we bought her a bunny, but he was so d.a.m.ned insistent. See, Isaiah and I have this past. I've known him forever because we met each other in a Dumpster-"

"Why here?" I cut her off, not caring about their tragic backstory. Everyone has a tale to sob over. Rich or poor.

Abby looks at me with wide eyes. "Because if I took you to my house that would start rumors. Really, West. I'm a single girl. I've gotta protect my image. We wouldn't want people to think we've been doing something indecent."

Talking to her is like watching a cat chase its tail. "Another lie."

"I can pretend that's my answer. I like pretending. You can create anything you want out of the world."

"You're possibly the most f.u.c.ked-up person I've met."

"That's not news." Abby slides her phone back into her pocket. "Now, if we're done 'pretending' to have a conversation, I'd like to go see my best friend. And, no, that's not a lie."

She turns on her heel and heads for the stairs.

"Abby," I call out as I shove my feet into my sneakers. She hesitates at the landing and waits for me to reach her. "Tell me why my mom's going to the bar."

A wicked grin spreads across her face. "I could tell you, but there would be absolutely no fun in doing that." And she walks up the stairs.

Haley Every breath tastes of dust, spilled gasoline and oil. Layers of grime coat the cold concrete floor of the garage and my cheek has become numb against it. How long has it been since Matt abandoned me? Seconds, hours, days? At first I a.s.sumed he left to get help-to find sanity in the insane, but no...he left. He just left.

"Haley!" The voice is far away, yet a nagging inside me says it's near.

Blood soaks my hands. It's Matt's blood-I think. Maybe mine. I don't know. We argued. That's all we do anymore...argue. It's what we're good at, but now it seems wrong. He hit me. I hit him back. And somehow neither of us stopped.

"She's cold," Jax says. "And look at her eyes. I think she's in shock."

It's an effort to turn my head toward Jax. His whitish-blond hair is spiked into a Mohawk. His shirt goes up and over his head and he lays it on my arms and chest, but not my hands. No, he wouldn't let it touch my hands. The blood would ruin his white T-shirt.

"Haley!" Jax poises his hands near me, not touching, just there...moving as if he doesn't know what to fix first or worried that if he did make contact he'd become diseased, cursed like me. "What happened?"

"I don't know." I don't recognize my voice. I'm different now. Changed.

I'm up like I've done a sit-up and my older brother, Kaden, supports my weight with his chest. He lifts my wrists. "Are you bleeding?"

I shake my head. "No." I don't think so.

The room spins and so do I. Kaden drops my hands to grip my shoulders. "Easy, Haley. Is she hurt?"

I tilt my head and thoughtfully look at Jax. Am I? Matt slapped my face. It's how the fight started. Is there a permanent bruise there? My own personal scarlet letter branding me as defeated?

Jax's eyes dart everywhere. "She looks okay, but she ain't acting right. Her knuckles are bruised. She's definitely been in a fight."

"There was blood." That seems important to tell. "Matt and I have been together for a year." Because that also feels important. One month after the end of my soph.o.m.ore year, Matt and I began. Now, it's the end of my junior year and Matt and I are over.

I nod. Yes, we're over. There's no coming back from this.

"Yes," I repeat. "There was blood."

"Who did you make bleed?" asks Jax. "Matt?"

Matt and I argued and he was mad, so mad. He slapped me, punched my stomach, then went for the head, and I intercepted him. I was a few hits in when he took advantage of my dropped guard and I absorbed the blow behind the ear. I collapsed to the floor and then he left. "I hit him."

I stopped his initial attack and I made him bleed.

"Matt did this to you?" Kaden's voice is pitched low yet hard, a promise of violence.

I shiver at the unsaid warning. They can't go after Matt. They can't. I've already created too much destruction.

"I saw her leave the party with him," Kaden continues.

Jax launches off the floor. "He's f.u.c.king dead."