That shouldn't sting. It wouldn't on any other day, but I can't help but think that it's only a matter of time before everyone here knows that about me.

I want to get right back in his face, turn this on him, make him feel like the worthless one. But I get the feeling that's why this is all happening. Maybe I'm not the only one feeling out of control today.

"Nah, man. You got it wrong. The team is better off without you."

I turn to walk away, and he shoves hard at my back. Stumbling forward, I collide with a few stools, toppling them, and barely staying on my feet.

I try to breathe, but my vision goes black around the edges, and that familiar need to hit something roars back. I clench my fists to rein it in and stand, my eyes on the door.

"You're nothing, Silas. You've already got has-been written all over you." I glance back, even though I know that's exactly what he wants. The bartender is pointedly ignoring us, polishing a glass that probably hasn't really been clean in five years. Levi continues, "Don't you fucking look down on me. I know you, man. I'm gonna be just fine, but you? It's just a matter of time before you fuck it all up. And then what will you have? Nothing."

And that one? That hits a little too close to home.

I get up in his face, nose to nose. "You know me? You don't know shit."

"I know enough. Brother's in prison. Mom's a whore. Trash is trash whether you dress it up with a scholarship and a uniform or not."

His face makes a satisfying crack when my fist connects. The jolt of pain in my wrist, the bite of broken skin on my knuckles . . . it dulls out my thoughts and sharpens everything else.

Satisfaction and anger and exhilaration burn through me, and the world sure as fuck doesn't feel muted anymore.

He's slow to recover and retaliate, and even though I see it coming, I let him get one hit in. He goes for my midsection, but he must still be dazed from my hit because it makes even less of an impact than I expect. I barely feel it. And I don't know why, but the piss-poor punch makes me even angrier.

"Come on, Levi. I might be trash, but you're pathetic. Lazy. Couldn't even play football without cheating."

He swings again, and I lean back enough that he only clips my jaw. The jolt is enough to sting and break the dam on my much-needed adrenaline. I grip him by the shirt and ram him into the bar on my right. A few glasses go sliding and crash onto the floor. The bartender yells something, but I don't listen, delivering my own hit to Levi's stomach, followed by a second.

He curses and shoves me back, and I stumble into a chair, sending a few more glasses shattering against the concrete floor. He comes at me, and I shift, using his speed to leverage him past me, tossing him forward into a table that topples and splinters under his weight.

He rolls onto his back, groaning, but I don't let him stay down. I need more of a fight than this. I drag him to his feet and make him look me in the eye. He swings and clocks me in the side of the head, but my blood is pumping so fast and hard that it's more obnoxious than painful. I don't know if I want to hit him again or just shake him as hard as I can. While I'm standing there thinking like a dumbass, he gets a good punch into my kidney, and my whole body locks up against the pain for a few seconds. Before he gets off another, I shove him into the wall. He hits hard, and only my hand keeps him from slumping down to the ground.

"You just couldn't leave it the fuck alone, could you?" I ask. "Spoiled rich boy is unhappy, so he has to drag everyone else down with him."

Levi is beginning to list to the side, and I'm sure if I let him go, he'd keep on leaning until he crashed. Whatever pain he's in, it doesn't hamper the angry look he gives me.

He spits and his bloody saliva lands on my shoe. I've got him pegged and he hates it.

"That's enough," I hear the bartender say behind me. "Walk away."

Levi laughs. "Don't pretend I dragged you down. You came here looking to fight. You work better down in the gutter."

"Maybe I do."

Then I clock him once more, and his expression goes slack, and he slumps down against the wall at my feet. His head droops toward his chest, blood dribbling down from his busted mouth.

Reflecting colored lights dance over the walls now, and I hear police sirens. And fuck, I think I might actually be jealous of that black, nothing world Levi's lost in.

How the hell did I go from walking away to this?

For the first time, I take stock of the bar around us. Broken glass. Broken furniture. The dude from the booth is long gone. A woman has her head poking past the kitchen door, watching me warily with her cell phone to her ear. The bartender is an older, chubbier version of Mr. Clean, and though he has a bat pressed beneath his palms against the wooden bar, he doesn't look ready to use it.

I turn and head for the door, but even before the cop steps inside, I know I've got no shot at walking out of here that easy. The cop asks me what happened, but there's no point in saying he started it like a little pansy. Not when you've got a juvy record. He gets the rundown from the bartender and the woman who called them. While a paramedic checks on a barely conscious Levi, I'm put in the back of a police car.

They say bad shit happens in threes, but I gave up counting a long time ago.

The bad seems to follow me. Or hell. Maybe Levi's right. Maybe it's me that follows the bad.

Maybe I don't know who I am apart from that.

Chapter 3.

Dylan The plastic zip ties bite into the skin of my wrists, and I wait, my shoulders aching from having my hands bound behind my back. My heart is racing, has been since I refused the officer's order to disperse from the protest and got arrested instead. I wonder how long my heart can beat this fast without giving out. Maybe I'll pass out soon, and then I'll get at least a modicum of relief from the guilt and fear gnawing at my insides.

The female police officer is finishing up my paperwork, while my friend Matt is being escorted away to the holding cell by another officer. He meets my eyes and makes a ridiculous face. I don't know how he's so calm. With his massive russet beard, he looks more scary than silly. He's got a good six inches on the guy who arrested us, and I don't blame the cop for looking nervous. Matty looks like he could go Sasquatch on everyone and bust his way out of here.

"Miss Brenner?" Officer Tribble stands in front of me. She's in her mid-thirties, dark hair, and frown lines around her mouth. She knows my father. Everyone knows my father. It's probably naive to think he's not already aware I'm here. My stomach twists again, and I hunch over in my chair, hoping it will make the aching worry go away. But I don't get much time to see if it works. She takes my elbow, her grip soft, and helps me stand, and then we're walking in the direction Matt was taken.

At the end of a hallway are two holding cells, one across from the other. Lined with metal benches bolted to the floor, the cell on the left contains three men. A middle-aged man in a ratty T-shirt lays passed out on a bench in the corner. On the other side of the cell, I see Matt in all his bearded glory. Despite the fact that there are several empty benches, he's seated on the one containing the third occupant of the cell. He's talking, but his cellmate appears to be ignoring him, which doesn't faze my friend in the slightest. He sends me a wink as Officer Tribble parades me past and stops in front of the empty cell across from Matt's. I breathe a sigh of relief. Despite my fear, when Matt tilts his head toward his cellmate and waggles his eyebrows suggestively, I laugh. The guy next to Matt looks up, and the laugh dies in my throat.

He sports a bruised jaw, bloomed purple over stubbled skin. His messy hair is somewhere between blond and brown and tumbles over his forehead, leading me to a set of hazel eyes that are astoundingly pretty and at odds with the rest of his hard appearance. His knuckles, too, look ripped up, and his eyes follow my progress with an intensity that has my stomach twisting with a fear that is altogether different from what I've been feeling for the last hour. Even so, I continue watching him . . . watching him watch me, really, as Officer Tribble cuts off my plastic binds and locks me in the empty cell.

I move to sit at the same end as Matt, so we can talk to each other quietly, but the intense-eyed stranger sits closer to the bars, blocking all but the wave of red hair that adds an extra two inches to Matt's already tall frame.

The guy is young, around my age, I would guess, and I wonder if the bruises have something to do with why he's in here or if they're just a separate part of his bad-boy mystique. Like oops, I forgot to put on leather before I left the house today, better get a little bloody instead.

Matt doesn't seem concerned that he might be dangerous. Then again, Matt is rarely concerned about anything. When he leans his bulky frame around his cellmate, I finally manage to tear my gaze away.

"You okay, Pickle?" he asks.

I'm going to thump him for using that nickname later. That is not a nickname to be used in front of beautiful people, even potentially criminal ones.

"Fine, Matty."

That's what I tell him, but I hunch over again. The worry is a physical weight in my belly, a stone that presses down on my gut, and I wonder how quickly one can develop a stomach ulcer.

"You don't look fine," my friend says. "You look like you're going to vom everywhere."

Lovely. As if I weren't mortified enough already by my actions today. But I can't be mad at Matt. If he hadn't stuck with me, I'd be here alone, which would be infinitely worse. "I'm sorry. This is my fault. I feel terrible that you stayed with me, and I got you into this."

He shrugs. "No harm, no foul."

Only Matt would call being arrested no harm. The guy is so laid-back, he's like the human equivalent of Xanax. I want that. I need that. All I can think about is what my father might say, and whether or not this will go on my record, and if it will affect my scholarship, and what Henry will say.

I stop myself there. I don't have to worry about what Henry will say because we're over. That should bother me. We broke up a week ago, and after four years together, I should be devastated. I should be moving right past shock and denial into the never-wears-anything-but-sweatpants stage.

I don't know what it says about me that I'm not. That I only think of him out of habit, nothing else.

I keep going, berating myself the way I wish Matt would. "We make plans for a reason, and I didn't stick to it. I should have walked away as soon as they gave the dispersal order. Next time I do something this stupid, don't you dare come after me."

"Nah. Next time I'll just clobber you over the head. Save us both the trouble."

I roll my eyes because we both know that would never happen. Matt's one of those guys who will always put themselves on the line for a friend. He could pretty much pass for a real-life Disney prince . . . if Disney made bearded, bisexual princes.

"Still . . . it wasn't cool of me. I don't know what I was thinking. I was just so frustrated, and tired of chanting while they ignored us. It made sense at the time."

"Yeah, well. You've had a lot on your mind lately."

I shoot him a glare. He thinks I'm behaving irrationally because of the breakup, but that's ridiculous. I'm not crazy. Matt, my mother, my roommate Nell-everyone keeps waiting for me to snap, to fold in on myself and just lose it because my boyfriend and I are no more. And maybe they're right. Maybe this is some weird emotional shock, and in a few weeks the hurt will hit me out of nowhere. But right now? The tiptoeing around the subject just makes me want to scream. "This had nothing to do with that."

Sure my life plan has taken a nosedive. And it wouldn't be unreasonable to freak out that the future I've been envisioning since Henry and I started dating four years ago has been blasted to bits.

But my boyfriend (or lack thereof) can't be the most important thing about me. So screw plans and futures and heartache and all of that. For the moment, I just need to focus on me.

Or I could keep doing crazy things like ignoring a direct order from police after a day of being ignored and derided for daring to stand up for the homeless population in town, which is about to lose one of only two shelters within twenty miles. Well . . . maybe I went a little further than just ignoring a direct order. I might have handcuffed myself to a pole outside the shelter.

"Then what was it about? Why'd you do it?" Matt asks.

"Because I couldn't not do it."

"Yeaaaah . . . that explanation is going to hold up really well against your father."

"Next time I promise not to let my emotions get the better of me when handcuffs are involved."

The attractive potential criminal shifts, and when I look at him, his eyebrows are raised in interest. His eyes really are far too pretty for a guy like him. Dudes who look dangerous should just be dangerous. Period. The end. They should not be dangerous and beautiful all at the same time. It leaves the universe out of balance, and it makes me do stupid things like stare. At a guy behind bars. If ever there were a kind of guy I should not stare at, someone potentially going to prison definitely has to rank in the top three.

Matt stretches out his long legs and says, "Next time, just tell me you want to get arrested ahead of time. That way I can make sure we're prepared. Javier is going to be pissed. Unless, of course, you want to call daddy dearest to get us out."

I don't even have to glare before he's holding up his hands in surrender.

"Why would you want to get arrested?" The dangerous one speaks. His voice is low and smooth with a slight Texas drawl that stretches out his words and draws my eyes to his lips.

"Handcuff fetish," Matt says, and I go bright red.

I am going to thump him so many times.

I glare and clear my throat. "Getting arrested can sometimes be the most powerful way to draw attention to a cause."

He lifts an eyebrow. "A cause?"

"A political one." That eyebrow drops, and he nods, crossing his arms and turning his attention away from me.

I must still be cracked in the head because his complete dismissal reminds me of our protest today, of the way the city can just take away a sanctuary for people who have no other place to go, and not even bat an eye. It makes me want to do some more stupid things. I stand and grip the bars in front of me and say, "You know, it's youth like you that give our whole generation a bad name."

He leans back and surveys me with annoyance. "Youth? How old are you?"

I wave a hand. "Young people. Whatever. My point is everyone thinks that we're these ignorant kids who are more concerned with our phones than the state of the world, and it's because of people like you turning up your nose at the slightest mention of politics."

He stands to mimic me, only he's so much taller, and his shoulders are broad, and his arms too muscled to slip completely through the bars like mine do. "People like me? What the fuck does that mean? Poor? Uneducated? Trash?"

I jerk back. "What? No. I didn't say any of those things. I just mean the stereotypical young adults who-"

"Only care about their phones. Yeah, I heard that part. I'd rather be that stereotype than the pampered little rich girl who thinks it's fun to get arrested, to burn money so she can throw a temper tantrum about whatever thing in the world is bothering her this week."

"Temper tantrum?" I'm aware even as I speak that I'm practically yelling, and I sound just like the spoiled girl he's painted me as. "I'm not throwing a temper tantrum."

Matty, ever the pacifist, says, "Maybe we should all just take a couple of breaths."

I storm on, desperate to win at least one argument today.

"I am so sick of people thinking what we do is a waste of time. At least we're doing something, instead of sticking our heads in the sand while the rest of the world goes to hell around us."

"The rest of the world has been hell all along for some of us, princess."

That stops me mid-rant, and I'm staring again, opening and closing my mouth in a way that definitely isn't doing anything to prove my point.

Finally, I huff out a breath and some of my desperation breaks through. I'm not even sure if it's desperation for his approval or just for someone, anyone, to listen. "Haven't you ever wanted to do something that everyone tells you is impossible or pointless? Haven't you ever cared about something enough to sacrifice for it? Regardless of how stupid or unlikely it seems. Haven't you ever just wanted things to be different?"

He studies me for a few moments, his large hands lifting to curl around the bars. And when I expect him to make another crack about me being spoiled or naive, he surprises me.

"What exactly are you hoping to change?"

Matt snorts. "Congratulations, man. You've officially found a way to occupy however many hours you have left here. This girl wants to fix the whole world."

An officer comes then and takes Matt away to make his phone call. He glances at me and mouths, "Javi?"

I nod, and watch him leave.

I know he's prodding, hoping I'll give in and say we can call my dad instead. But I just can't. I know he could get us out faster, but I can't see him yet. Not until I've figured out some excuse. Not until I've figured out what crack in my brain made me behave so rashly tonight.

It's not because I'm upset over Henry, but I can't help but think it's all connected. My emotions are all out of whack, and the only thing I know is that today at that protest, I felt invisible.

And I didn't realize until I clicked those handcuffs into place that I'd felt that way long before we set up camp in front of that homeless shelter.

"So what were you trying to change?" he asks.

I feel weirdly shy now that Matt is gone, and I no longer feel the need to go into my ten-minute rant about the state of politics in this country.

I turn away from him so that I don't have to make eye contact, kind of like that whole don't look directly at the sun or you'll risk visual impairment thing. This was just a different kind of impairment. Like my ability to think straight. I wave a hand and explain: "The city is cutting funding for the homeless shelter downtown. They're claiming budget problems, but really they just don't want their historic downtown blemished with the less fortunate."

He nods, but doesn't reply, and why am I so damn self-conscious? We stay silent for a while, and I wish Officer Tribble hadn't taken my watch because it feels like Matt has been gone a lot longer than the couple of minutes it should take for a phone call. And I can feel his eyes on me, ramping up my already frayed nerves. I've just given in to the urge to pace when he speaks again.