Oh, he was a fine one to talk. But it didn’t really bother me. It was what I expected. “I will, thanks.” I gave him a sweet smile. “But stop texting Kylie hateful things or I will do to your balls what Phoenix did to your car.”

That seemed to catch him off guard. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me. You can say whatever you want to me, call me any nasty name you can think of, but leave Kylie the hell alone. Now.” I threw the plastic grocery bag in my hand on the floor at his feet, enjoying how appalled he looked. “And here’s the last of your crap from Kylie. She says to tell you to go to hell.”

I turned and walked away, calling over my shoulder, “And I’d like to add, fuck off.”

Damn, that felt good. Instead of hiding out, I was standing tall. Saying exactly what I felt. Defending a friend who I had hurt tremendously.

Nathan just slammed the door shut without a word.

That’s right. I was done with him.

Just one last stop to make.

* * *

The minute I pulled into the driveway and saw Davis on the front step, I should have backed out immediately. But I didn’t have the finely tuned sense of self-preservation that Phoenix and his cousins had. Totally the opposite. My first thought actually was that maybe Davis knew where Phoenix was, because he hadn’t answered my text.

But when he stood up and greeted me with a smile that was nothing like the casual friendliness he’d shown in the park, I felt a tremor of fear. “Where’s Phoenix?” he asked.

I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

“Bullshit. Come in the house and let’s talk about it.” He opened the front door, making me wonder if Tyler and Riley had really left it unlocked or if he had picked the lock.

There was no way I was going in the house with him. “Sorry, I have to get to work. I’ll let Phoenix know you’re looking for him.” Maybe if I were polite, friendly, if I acted like I didn’t know anything was wrong, I could just retreat and call Jessica and let her know not to go home without Riley.

But Davis grabbed my wrist so hard I gasped. “Get in the fucking house,” he said, and I saw in his other hand he had a knife.

Oh my God. I started to sweat, my fingers shaking. I couldn’t think, had no idea what to do. I should kick him or hit him or scream. But I knew that none of the neighbors would come to my aid and he was twice my size. I was fragile, I knew that.

He couldn’t really want to hurt me. He probably wanted money, or drugs, or both.

Which proved again how naive I was.

He dragged me into the house and shut the door, and when I looked at the cold anger in his eyes, I realized that he could kill me. He could kill me without thinking twice about it, and I felt the fear that Phoenix must have felt when he saw me unconscious. I finally understood what that had done to him, because for the first time, I wasn’t looking backward at a close call, I was staring into the face of my mortality, and it was terrifying.

“What do you want?” I asked, amazed that I found the courage to speak.

He had placed himself between me and the door, but I took a few steps toward the kitchen, keeping my eyes on him. I was wearing a sundress and I wasn’t sure how fast I could run in it, but I was going to try to make a break for the back door. It would be better than going down without a fight.

He grinned. “Don’t worry, I don’t want you. You’re too bony for my taste, so as much as I might enjoy sharing a woman with Sullivan, it ain’t going to be you.”

Ridiculous to be proud of the fact that he didn’t hurt my feelings, but I was. His opinion of me didn’t matter in the slightest, and I was hugely relieved that he had no intention of raping me.

“I’m not sorry to hear that,” I told him.

He laughed. “Look, I just need someone to pick up a package for me, that’s all. You’ve got a car, and no one will notice you because a lot of students live in the building. Just go and ring the doorbell and take the package, and hand them the cash I give you.”

So he wanted me to pick up his drugs for him.

“Then you’ll consider you and Phoenix even?”

He nodded. “Totally. I can’t go myself. The neighbors know who I am, and someone might call the cops.”

Which meant that they might call the cops on me. “What if I get caught?”

“Rat me out.” He shrugged. “You’re not going to get caught. Put on your backpack or whatever and act normal. Look, there’s a thousand bucks riding on this. Do this and I’ll disappear, I guarantee it.”

This was so illegal. This was the end of my life as I knew it if I got busted. But I knew it was safer for me to do it than Phoenix. Not to mention his personal feelings about drugs. It would go against everything in him to run drugs for Davis, and most likely what would happen was they would wind up in a fistfight. And while Phoenix certainly had rage and a fair amount of skill, Davis was huge. I doubted that Phoenix would come out of it unscathed.

So I had to do it.

I was never brave.

For once I needed to be brave.

If I expected Phoenix to have my back, I had to have his, right?

But this was illegal. So wrong. Phoenix wouldn’t want me to do this. “What if I say no?”

He shook his head slowly. “You don’t want to say no, trust me.”

My heart was racing, and I felt sick to my stomach, but I knew this was too risky. Either way it was risky, so it was better to take the legal risky route. “Yes,” I told him. “Yes, I do.”

He took a step forward, the knife in his hand, and I was pulling out my phone, dialing 911 already when the front door opened.

It was Tyler, Phoenix, Riley, and Rory. It took the guys all of three seconds to assess the situation.

“Go,” Tyler said to Rory, shoving her back out the front door while shielding her with his body. “Lock the car until Robin comes out, then go.”

I was already bolting toward the kitchen, knowing full well Davis would reach for me, which he did. But I was fast, or maybe too scrawny, because only his fingertips touched my arm. Or maybe Phoenix or Riley pulled him backward. I didn’t turn around to look, I just ran.

But I did hear Phoenix say to him, “If you ever come near my girlfriend I will fucking kill you with my bare hands, you know I will.”

A shiver slipped up my spine. Once I was in the driveway, I finally let out the breath I was holding and got in the car with Rory. “Who was that?” she asked, looking scared.

“Drug dealer. Drive around the block. Do you think we should call the cops?”

“I don’t think the guys would like that. Easton, you know, the custody. Did he have a gun?”

“Not that I saw.” Rory cruised down the street, but she was already using voice command to call Tyler. He didn’t answer.

Suddenly feeling like I was going to throw up, I stuck my head between my legs. “I don’t think I handled that very well,” I told her, my words muffled from the fabric of my dress.

“I think you handled it better than I would have. I would have peed my pants.” Her phone rang, and she answered it. “Are you all okay?” Relief crossed her face. “Okay, good. We’ll be back in a minute.”

She hung up. “Everything is okay. They’re all fine and Davis left. He knew he was outnumbered. Phoenix wants you to meet him at the park in half an hour.”

* * *

I expected it to be awkward when I saw Phoenix. I had been shut down physically and emotionally when he left my parents’, and we hadn’t exactly had the best conversation. I also knew he would be feeling guilty about Davis.

But when I pulled into the parking lot at the park, he was sitting on a bench already waiting for me, hair in his eyes, arm tossed carelessly over the back. His eyes were closed, like he was enjoying the sun, and any nerves I had evaporated.

God, I loved him. I looked at him, and it just made my heart ache.

When I stepped out of the car, he was already standing, and he came toward me, steady, his hands in the front pockets of his jeans. He was wearing one of the band shirts I had given him for his birthday.

Without saying a word to me, he just cupped my face with his hands and kissed me. It was a deep, intense kiss, his tongue sliding across my bottom lip, his breath hot and sweet. His fingers were rough and callused on my skin, but his touch was gentle, worshipful, his kiss everything I could have hoped for and more.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered into his mouth.

“I’m sorry,” he said in echo. “I shouldn’t have left like that. I was an asshole.”

“I shouldn’t have screamed at you. You’re right, I was shutting down.” I snaked my arms around his waist and leaned into the familiar feel of him, taking in his masculine scent, the warmth of his shirt from the sun, the muscles in his thighs against me.

“Come here,” he said, pulling me to the bench, and onto his lap. “God, when I saw you with Davis . . . I’m sorry. I never thought that he would find you.”

“I know, it’s not your fault.” I perched there, fingers clenching his T-shirt, kissing him again, and sucking lightly on his lower lip, relieved that he didn’t seem furious with me. I started crying, I couldn’t help it. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.

“Thank you for the card.”

He smiled. “You make me sappy.”

“I like sappy.”

His thumb rubbed over my hand and his expression grew serious. “Robin, you know that I’ve always been someone who lived in the now, who dealt with the now. But for the first time ever, you made me believe in a future. You made me want a future. You made me believe in you and me. And when I saw Davis with you . . . I thought, how can I drag you into my shit like that? I can’t ever walk away from the past. It’s always going to be with me.”