“It’s okay,” I told him. “It doesn’t matter, and they are right, you know. I do look like hell. But I’m okay with it.” I was. If it truly bothered me, I would put on makeup. But I couldn’t work up the energy to worry about it. It was nice not to have to reapply lipstick every hour.

“You do not.” Phoenix glanced away for a second, and when he looked back at me, my breath caught in my throat. He looked at me like I was important, special. “You’re beautiful, you know.”

To him, I was. I could see that and it had more impact than any bitchy comments from girls I didn’t know. “Thank you,” I whispered.

“Are they right, in any way?” he asked, and I realized his face was pale. “Do you have cancer?”

Oh, God. I shook my head rapidly, feeling guilty all over again. “No! No, of course not. I’m not sick at all. And no, I didn’t go to rehab either, though I did stop drinking because I had one of those nights where I blacked out and it scared the shit out of me.” That was as close to the truth as I could get, but I wanted him to understand that he shouldn’t feel sorry for me. I didn’t deserve his pity or sympathy.

He gave a sigh, one that seemed like relief to me, and he nodded. “I’m glad to hear it. For a second I thought, what if they’re right?” He looked like he was going to say something else, but he didn’t. He just shook his head. “Anyway. Eat your soup.”

I took a spoonful, but my appetite was gone. I couldn’t think of anything to say that wasn’t either super charged or totally generic chitchat, which seemed almost insulting. Conversation for strangers, and whatever Phoenix was, he wasn’t a stranger. So finally I asked what I wanted to know. “Can I ask you something?”

He nodded, chewing his burrito. “Sure. But make sure you’re prepared for the answer.”

That was a good point. But I still asked it anyway. I needed to know before I let myself fall any further. “Did you love Angel? Do you still love her?”

His eyebrows rose. It obviously was not a question he was anticipating. But then he smiled and shook his head. “No. I never loved her. She was interested in me. I figured why not? And I did care about her. But then for someone who claimed to want me so much, she couldn’t be bothered to visit me when I was in.”

“So you’re more angry than hurt?”

“Yeah, I guess. But I suppose I’m not even all that angry, because anger on me is a lot louder and messier than what you saw.”

It seemed like a warning. Or maybe I just took it that way. I didn’t have a lot of experience with anger. Passive-aggressive behavior? Sure. But not pure anger. “Well, I’m still sorry that she wasn’t an honest girlfriend to you.”

“It’s okay.” Phoenix leaned forward, closer to me. “Can I ask you a question now?”

“Sure. Just be prepared for the answer,” I parroted back to him, hoping he wouldn’t ask me anything I felt like I couldn’t answer.

“What’s his name?”

“Who?”

“The guy everyone thinks did this to you.”

“Did what?” I asked, heart starting to race. “No one did anything to me.”

“What those girls noticed.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and starting swiping at it. “I am being honest, you look beautiful to me, but you do look different. What happened at that party where you blacked out?” he asked.

Then he showed me a picture of myself from early in the summer. I was drunk, yelling, plastic cup in the air. I was in full makeup, cleavage out, hair hot-rolled into waves. My lip curled before I could stop myself.

“No one did anything to me. That is the truth. And even if they did, why would you want his name?”

“So I can beat the shit out of him.”

I tore my eyes off his phone screen to stare at him. He sounded serious. He looked serious. Tightly wound, the caged tiger, ready to attack the minute the gate was raised. “I don’t need you to do that, but even if I did, aren’t you on probation or something? And why were you in prison anyway?”

“For beating the shit out of someone.”

My jaw dropped. It made sense. I mean, if it wasn’t drugs or driving under the influence, what would it be? I didn’t think he was the kind for stealing. It just didn’t match the behavior I had seen. But fighting? It wasn’t that hard to picture. A five-month sentence seemed harsh for assault, though it wasn’t like I really had any clue about sentencing and the justice system. Maybe I had been avoiding asking because while I wanted to respect his privacy I also just didn’t want to have to face the fact that Phoenix had done something wrong. I wanted to hold onto the belief that like Tyler, he had been wrongfully imprisoned in some way, despite what Tyler himself had hinted at.

My pause where I processed that information grew too long, and he gave a sound of exasperation.

“Don’t worry, I only beat the shit out of people who deserve it.”

“Who deserved it?” I asked in a quiet voice, wondering if anyone ever truly deserved it.

“My mom’s piece-of-shit boyfriend, who just happens to be a drug dealer. Some of his inventory went missing and he decided my mother took it. I caught him with a knife, carving up her stomach while he . . .”

I was horrified, and my face must have reflected that.

Phoenix cut his words off, shaking his head. His lips were pursed. “Never mind. But he deserved it for that and for all the times he hit her before that. And I’m not even sorry for it. I’d do it again if the circumstances were the same.”

I saw that he meant it. All for a woman who hadn’t bothered to tell him where she was moving while he was in prison for defending her. So I just nodded, because I had no idea what to say. I didn’t understand that world and I didn’t know what it would feel like to watch your mother being abused or how instinctive it would be to use violence to stop violence. I did think that it was the right thing to do to stop someone hurting another person, that in a situation where nothing was right, it was more wrong to walk away and pretend it wasn’t happening.

A knife carving up her stomach. Good God.

Phoenix pushed his tray away. “I should probably just go.”

“Why?” That upset me. I didn’t want him to walk away with anything awkward between us. I wasn’t even sure how I felt, but I knew I didn’t have any right to judge something I didn’t know anything about.

“Because . . .” He looked away and shook his head.

“Why?” I repeated, both of our lunches totally abandoned.

“Because I like you.” Phoenix turned back and met my gaze. “And I won’t be good for you.”

My throat tightened. “I think maybe you think I’m a better person than I am.”

But Phoenix shifted his chair closer to me so we were sitting next to each other, and he took my hand. “Robin.”

“Yes?”

“I’m no good for you. And you’re probably no good for me. But we’re going to do this anyway, aren’t we?”

I nodded, because looking into his dark eyes there wasn’t any other answer. I couldn’t walk away from him, and I couldn’t let him walk away from me. “Yes. We are.”

“I thought so,” he murmured, and he kissed me in the food court, a quick brush of his lips over mine.

My skin tingled, and I sighed.

Oh yeah, we were definitely going to do this.

It was the only thing I’d been sure of all summer.

When the truth was that an ordinary life with an ordinary family hadn’t just made me ordinary, it had made me naive. Because in that moment, I genuinely thought that Phoenix’s background, his anger, my secret, didn’t matter at all.

It did.

The very minute I knew I was done for? When Robin asked me if I loved Angel. Because when a girl asks that, she wants to know if there is room in your heart for her. I knew that not only was there room for Robin, she could probably work her way through it until she was in every single crevice, spreading like octopus ink across the ocean floor. I got in to octopuses in fourth grade, checking out every book I could at the library about them and featuring them in all my reports and art projects. The teacher wrote a note to my mother about my obsessive behavior, which I never gave her. But I remember thinking, what is so wrong with digging octopus? They have eight legs and suckers and spew ink, is it any wonder I was fascinated?