“There might be glass in it.” I look down at his hand, setting the cloth aside. I don’t let him go as I use the other hand to turn on the water. Adrian’s fingers begin to tremble and I’m about to ask him why he’s shaking when I realize it’s because of me. That I’m shaking and vibrating through him and I wonder if he’ll call me on it, but he doesn’t.

“Maybe,” he replies, and without looking, I know he’s still staring at me.

“Over the sink,” I say, pulling his hand slightly. The cuts don’t look too deep, but there are quite a few of them. His knuckles are swollen and I have the urge to kiss them after they’re clean. An urge I have no business having. Is it him, I wonder, or who he is to me? Because I know what my father took from him.

“Pour the peroxide on.”

I open the bottle and then holding his hand, I tilt it until clear liquid is mixing with red. Each little wound bubbles and sizzles and I wonder if it hurts, if heat burns in his hand, so I risk a glance in the mirror to see he’s looking at me there. I can’t read the expression on his face. I never really can, but I don’t turn away. We watch each other and a wrinkle forms over his eyes and he studies me like there will be a test on me later and I wonder if I passed.

If he’ll pass on whatever he learns.

It’s too much, and I have to look away. He’s bleeding because of me. Been bleeding because of my family and he doesn’t know it.

I suddenly wonder if my dad hadn’t driven into that yard if there would be another toothbrush in the cup. A girlfriend or maybe he’d still be with his sister and there would be a little Batman toothbrush there for his nephew.

Tears beg for release, but I don’t let them come. Instead I set the bottle back down, wet a cloth from the kit, and gently wash the blood from his hand. Adrian doesn’t flinch or speak and soon he’s all clean and wrapped up. For the first time in what feels like forever, I let go of his hand.

“All done,” I say, and I know it’s a silly thing to let come out of my mouth.

Still there are no words, so I look up at him and he’s close, so very close, and I notice the depth of his eyes and the stubble on his face and earring holes in his ears.

Finally his gaze leaves my eyes and they land on my lips. “I think I’ll call you Casper,” he whispers, and then his mouth comes down on mine. It’s gentle at first. My instinct is to pull away. I don’t know him and there are too many secrets and too much history between us for me to let him do this, but I like the way he tastes and can’t help but moan when his tongue slides along the seam of my lips.

And then my mouth is opening and now he’s tasting me and I’m tasting him more deeply. I have never, ever been kissed like this in my life. A slow tingle forms in my stomach and shoots through me and then he’s twisting me and pinning me against the counter. I feel his erection against my stomach, his good hand in my hair.

My body is screaming YES, because it feels good to be worshipped like this, but then my mind cuts in. I see the lonely toothbrush and think about his poem, space, and know that his life is darker because of something that’s connected to me.

I pull my mouth away. “Wait.”

Adrian does. His lips don’t move toward mine again, but he also doesn’t move away. I still feel each muscled contour of his body and wish I could wrap up inside it. Just to feel protected, even if it’s only make-believe.

“I can’t… We shouldn’t…” If you knew, you wouldn’t want to. You’d throw me out.

“I think we can and maybe it doesn’t matter if we should.” His voice is low, sexy. I shiver.

“It does.” He doesn’t make it easy for me to squeeze around him, but he doesn’t stop me either. “It does,” I say again. “I should go. Make sure you clean that again and change your bandage.”

“I know how to take care of wounds,” he replies.

“Okay… good.” Or not good because that means he’s had a lot of them. My heart is beating so loudly I wonder if he can hear it. I hope he can’t.

I’m walking down the hallway so fast I’m scared I’ll trip. I can’t stop myself from going, though. I need out of here before I change my mind. Before I decide to be a normal eighteen-year-old and pretend he’s a normal… however old he is… guy and that nothing matters but hooking up and having fun.

So much more matters than that, and I can’t afford to pretend it doesn’t.

“I’m sorry for your hand,” I say when I get to the door. “And thank you… for helping. For maybe saving my life.”

It feels like a fist slams into my chest at that. Did he save my life? After my family took one away from him?

But then I pause, my hand on the doorknob. Now I can’t seem to leave without asking. I turn, looking over my shoulder. Adrian’s standing in the hallway, like he came partially out to get me but changed his mind.

“Why Casper?” I ask.

“Because you’re the girl with ghosts in her eyes.” That simply, Adrian turns away and walks down the hallway. I’m stumbling out the door, slamming it behind me.

“Because you’re the girl with ghosts in her eyes…” I don’t know why that hits me so hard, but it does. And he’s right.

It’s not until I’m halfway home that I remember I have Adrian’s phone in my purse and his drugs in my trunk.

Chapter Seven

~Adrian~

My hand hurts like hell when I wake up about one in the afternoon. I never sleep this late, even when I’m up half the night, but since I didn’t have my phone, I didn’t have people calling all day waking me up. I realize she gave me space for a second time, only this time I didn’t have to ask for it. This time it was just because she accidentally took my connection to the world.

For a second I let myself remember what it felt like to kiss her. I would have taken her then and there if she hadn’t stopped me. I need to get her ghosts out of my head, but the second she stopped feelin’ it, I did.

When I was eight, I saw my dad force himself on my mom for the first time. It’s the first memory I have of vomiting. Seeing her tears as she couldn’t look me straight in the eye and hearing her say, “It’s okay, baby. Close the door.” But it wasn’t fucking okay. I puked right there in the hallway, pizza from lunch all over my shirt and the floor.

Then I cleaned it up. Scrubbed the carpet while I fought like hell to block out their sounds because I knew if he saw my lunch on the floor, he’d beat my ass. Maybe I should have let him see it. Maybe I deserved an ass-kicking for not making him leave her alone.

Before the memories become too much, I open the drawer beside my bed and pull out the pipe inside. I fill my lungs with smoke before setting it down and wrapping my hand around Ash’s shirt under my pillow.

That’s all I give myself. That one little touch before I’m out of bed, grabbing clothes and heading to the shower. It stings when the hot water hits all the openings in my skin. I close my eyes, imagining the water somehow makes them spread and get deeper until they swallow me whole and all the pain is gone.

But no. I’d never take the easy way out like that.

I turn the water off, wrap my hand, and get dressed. There’s not much time until people probably start showing up at my house, wondering why they can’t get a hold of me and itching to party. The water did nothing to make me feel better. I wish it could absolve me, cleanse me and make it so I never brought Ash in the front yard that day. So that maybe it was me instead of him.

I head over to the little house only a few streets from me. My good hand comes down on the door three separate times before it finally opens to show a little Italian lady named Lettie who’s probably not even five feet tall.