THERE WAS NOTHING quite like being woken up by the toe of a shoe tapping against your shoulder. It had happened to me a handful of times, and I remembered each one. I recalled each shoe that had nudged me awake since kneeling down and using a hand was apparently just too much work. That time, it wasn’t a loafer, or a wedge, or a sneaker. It was a boot. A black one.

I groaned before I looked at the boot’s owner. When I did, my groan deepened.

“What are you doing lurking around here?” Even in the dark, I made out Garth’s twisted smile.

“You know me.” I shoved his boot away and sat up. Stiff, stiff, and more stiff. “I’m good at lurking.” I grabbed the corners of the blanket and wrapped it around my shoulders. If it was dark and cool enough to need a blanket, it was late.

That meant Rose was probably worried sick. That meant Jesse probably was, too. Jesse . . .

The reminders flooded my mind as the sleep cleared from it. I had no future with Jesse. In both the immediate and distant sense.

The pain had been bad that afternoon, but something about the night and being so close to the anti-Jesse brought on something else entirely. I almost reached for my chest, half-expecting to find the handle of a dagger protruding from it.

“What are you doing out here?” I asked, trying to distract myself. I didn’t care. Not really. Some girls might freak out if a creeper like Garth Black stumbled upon them late at night in the middle of some random field, but I wasn’t. I’d been around enough real creepers to know the difference. Garth was a creeper, make no mistake about it, but a harmless one.

Harmless save for the nasty comments he wielded like a damn samurai sword.

“I live here,” he said, like it should have been obvious.

My eyebrows knitted together.

“What? Did you flatter yourself by thinking I’d come looking for you?”

I didn’t like the way he looked down at me, so I stood and tucked the blanket tighter around me. “Of all the people who’d come searching for me if I needed to be found, your name wouldn’t be anywhere on that list. Least of all first on that list.”

Garth couldn’t have looked anymore unfazed. “And who’d be first on that list?” From the curl of his smile alone, I knew who he would name before he did it. “Jesse? Your precious, infallible, ivory tower Jesse Walker, eh?” Garth extended his arms and did one slow turn. “Well, I hate to tell ya, honey, but that white knight of yours isn’t here. He wasn’t the one to come find you when you got yourself lost.” His dark eyes shone. “Looks like you’re stuck with me.”

I glowered at him as hard as I’d ever glowered at anyone. “I. Am. Not. Lost.”

Still the unfazed expression. I wanted to smack it right off of his face. “Rowen, you’re so damn lost you’ve forgotten how you got there in the first place. It’s just become who you are. Rowen the Lost.”

Before I knew what I was doing, I shoved him. Hard. So hard he fell back a step. But even at that, he didn’t look any more concerned than if he were dealing with a litter of mewing kittens.

“I’m not lost!” I balled my fists at my sides. “You are, you dickhead! You’re the lost one—not me!”

“Yes,” he said in a calm voice, “yes, I am. And so are you.”

Giving him another shove for good measure, I spun around and marched away.

“I hate you!” I yelled over my shoulder, heading into a night so dark, I wasn’t sure I could make my way back home.

Home . . .

Willow Springs wasn’t my home. It was a mirage of one. A carrot dangled in front of me. A dream I’d let myself dream and one that would never be realized.

When Garth’s next words came, I felt the first tear about to form in the corner of my eye. “You want a drink?”

I came to a stop. Sniffing, I turned slowly. “No,” I said, the volume long gone from my voice. “I need one.”

Garth inclined his head. “Me, too. And I hate to drink alone. Reminds me too much of my dad.” He waited for me to cross the distance between us before adding, “Let’s go drown our sorrows before we have to wake up and get back to our shitty lives.”

Drinking alone with a guy like Garth Black wasn’t the smartest thing to do. I knew that. Hell, I’d lived that. But right then, with the way I felt and the pain I wanted to forget, I just didn’t care. I’d gone through a long period of turning to guys to make me forget, to temporarily ease the pain and sell me the illusion of being wanted and loved. The past couple years, I leaned more toward drowning the pain out with a bottle. Or I had, pre-Willow Springs. I hadn’t had one drop of alcohol since arriving . . . but that was about to change.

I followed Garth for a few minutes. Long enough to wonder if he was leading me into the middle of nowhere. Until I remembered “middle of nowhere” was where I’d been since I’d stepped off of the bus. After another minute, Garth came to a halt. Sweeping his hand ceremoniously in front of him, he said, “Home sweet home.”

Oh. My. God.

The trailer that made a person itch just by looking at it? Yeah, that was what we were standing in front of.

“Um . . .”

“Don’t worry. I know what you’re thinking.” Garth moved around to the side where a couple of lounge chairs in the same ruin as the trailer were. “How can I live with myself living in the lap of luxury when there are little children dying of starvation.”

I glanced over at Garth curiously. Was that a joke that had just slipped out of his cryptic mouth? Was that a bit of snark where I’d been so certain none could reside?

I didn’t know how to respond to his unexpected slip of humor, so I stayed silent. After sweeping off the debris on one of the rundown chairs, he loped toward the trailer. “I’ll be right back with whatever I can find that’s the strongest.”

I almost replied, Don’t touch anything, but thought better of it. If that was Garth’s home . . . well, that was his home. I wouldn’t step a foot inside of it, ever, but that didn’t mean I had to knock it.

A couple of windows had a bit of flashing light streaming from them, like maybe a TV was playing inside. I was just settling—carefully—into the lounge chair when I heard a couple of raised voices. So Garth didn’t live alone and, judging from the deep voices, he lived with another man. A brother, maybe? A father?

Whoever else shared the dilapidated trailer with him, one thing was clear: they weren’t on good terms at the moment. I couldn’t make out individual words, just lots of shouting and curses thrown back and forth, but I was familiar with that “conversation.” My mom and I had it at least once a week since I’d been brave enough to stand up to her.

When I heard the familiar sound of glass shattering, I popped up in my chair. I was about to break a solemn vow and actually enter that rust bucket when Garth practically lunged out of the door. What looked like a bottle exploded into tiny pieces behind him when it crashed into the doorway instead of . . . his head?

Garth glared at the ground for a couple seconds as he continued toward me, a bottle clutched in his hand, but when he lifted his face, his expression was almost as unfazed as it had been when I’d been the one yelling at him.

“What the hell was that?” I asked. I knew, as someone who’d dealt with it, if a person was within hearing or seeing distance, we hoped to hell they’d just keep their mouth shut and pretend they hadn’t witnessed a thing. However, being on the other side of the equation, I understood why so many people couldn’t stay silent.

“Well, let’s see,” Garth said as he stopped in front of me. “It’s a weekday night, past ten o’clock, and all the liquor except for my secret stash”—he lifted the bottle—“ran out an hour ago. So that means he’s still drunk enough to be pissed but not quite drunk enough to be passed out yet.”

I jumped when I heard another breaking sound. “Who?” I asked, wondering if being within the same county line as that person, let alone their backyard, was safe.