“No.” She doesn’t seem alarmed or upset or anything really. Just indifferent. She moves back, leaving the door open and I’m not sure if she wants me to come in or not. “Where’d you find your keys?” She changes the topic as she roams over to a desk in the corner, which is cleared off. Her entire room is actually; the beds only have a mattress on them and the posters on the walls have been taken down. She must be leaving soon, probably to go back home or wherever it is she came from.

I swallow the lump in my throat, thinking about how I have to go back where I came from soon, too. “I keep a spare set in the gas tank.”

She glances over her shoulder, elevating her eyebrows. “And you couldn’t have told me that last night when I couldn’t find them?”

I shrug and finally cross the threshold, stepping into her personal space. “I swear I did, but then the next thing I know I’m waking up in the truck by myself, the sun is up, and you’re gone.”

She pulls the desk drawer open and reaches inside it. “Yeah, I’m not one for sleeping in trucks with guys who like to hog the entire seat.”

I sit down on the mattress, wishing I’d gotten a shot or two in before I came here. At least then, my headache would be gone. “You could have put me in your car, you know, and driven me back with you.” I’m half joking, because I don’t really care. I’ve slept in the front seat of my truck more than once and I’m sure I’ll do it again.

She retrieves a prescription bottle out of the drawer, reads the label, then tosses it into an open box on the floor. “I didn’t drive back.” She grabs her iPod off the dock on the desk, the last thing left in her room. She throws it into the box and then leans over the desk to unplug the dock.

“Then how’d you get back?” I ask as I stare at her ass. God, the things I’d like to do to that ass.

“I hitchhiked.” She stands back up, drops the dock in the box, and kneels down on the floor. She adds a purple teddy bear from her bed, then gathers her hair out of her eyes, and grabs a roll of tape from the desk. She folds up the top of the box and stretches a line of tape over it, sealing the last of her stuff.

“You hitchhiked?” I say, unfathomably. “Are you serious?”

She presses down on the strip of tape, securing it in place. “It’s not that big of a deal.” She chucks the tape aside and then stands up and pretends to check to make sure she’s packed up everything, when really I think she’s avoiding looking at me. “Do you see anything else lying around?”

I continue to gape at her. “So let me get this straight. Last night after you put me in the truck, you walked down the highway until some guy picked you up and gave you a ride here.”

Her eyes land on me. “Who said it was a guy?”

I scan her body over. So God damn sexy it’s ridiculous and her skin is so ridiculously soft… an image of me touching her in the truck pushes up in my head. Me lying on top of her. My hands all over her. Is it real or from a dream? “Am I wrong?”

She narrows her eyes, ready for a fight, but then puffs out a breath, surrendering. “Yeah, it was. So what? Nothing happened.” She thrums her fingers on the sides of her legs as she looks around the floor.

I get to my feet. “You should have just stayed in the truck. Do you know how dangerous hitchhiking is?”

“About as dangerous as starting a fight at a strip club when you’re by yourself.” She walks over to the box and picks it up, steadying it in her arms. “And you’re welcome for saving your ass.” She props the box on her hip and then looks at me like she’s waiting for me to say it.

“You shouldn’t have hitchhiked,” I say instead, and then snatch the box from her, gazing at her lips, recognition clicking in my head… kissing her, drowning in her taste.

At first she looks like she’s going to snatch the box back from me, her hands rising toward it, but then she drops them back to her side as I move out of her reach.

“And thanks for pretending that you were pregnant with my child and crying over bills,” I say and then the rest comes rushing back to me. I kissed her. In my truck. I felt her and tasted her because I needed to and wanted to. And she helped, not by kissing me but by checking my blood sugar. Shit. “And for helping me with, you know, the pills and stabbing my finger with the needle.” The last thank-you is harder to say.

The corners of her lips quirk as she folds her arms over her chest. “I’m surprised you remember what happened at all.” She pauses, like she’s waiting for me to say something about the kiss.

I back toward the door with the box in my hand. “I’m actually good at drunk remembering.” I wink at her, trying to play it off, because I can’t go there. I’ve never stuck around afterward and had to endure the awkwardness of the morning after. Granted, we didn’t have sex, but still I touched her breast and slid my fingers up her legs.

She offers me a small smile. “I’m sure you are.”

I feel this heat swell inside my chest at the sight of her smile and it feels both good and bad at the same time. I’ve never flirted with a girl like this before. I usually give them like an hour and use little effort, just enough to charm her, get laid, and leave. Building too much of a connection defeats the purpose of what I’m trying to accomplish with sex and that’s to control a few moments and forget all the moments I didn’t have control. Things have crossed that line between Violet and I, especially after last night. I can’t have sex with her without feeling bad afterward, which means it would be next to impossible to bail after I got what I needed from her. But the thing is I want to slip inside her so bad it’s seriously becoming hard to control.

“I have a question,” she says, grabbing a bag off the bed and draping the handle over her shoulder.

Her tone makes me wary. “Okay.”

“I thought,” she starts but then reconsiders. “I mean, I thought diabetics were supposed to give themselves shots.”

I get a little uneasy as we veer toward two subjects I hate. My diabetes and needles. “Yeah, it doesn’t do any good when there’s alcohol in my system.”

“But usually you use a needle.”

“Yeah.” My throat feels thick.

“Does it hurt?”

“Sometimes it does,” I say, sounding choked. “Depending on my mood.”

She observes me briefly then drops the subject.

“So where’s the box heading?” I ask, patting the bottom of the box.

She hugs her arms around herself as she glances over her shoulder at the window. “Outside, I guess.”

I nod, and then head out into the hall. She follows me, shutting the door behind her. As we walk to the elevator I try not to think about the fact that after I get done helping her, I’m going to have to go back to my own dorm and figure out what to do with my stuff—figure out where I’m going. When we get outside, I glance around the parking lot. There are hardly any cars left on campus.

“So which car am I putting the box in?”

She stops at the edge of the curb and bites her lips as she looks at the road to the side of us. “You can just set it down here.”

I lower the box onto the concrete, lost. “Is someone picking you up or something?”

“Or something,” she mutters and plops down on the box. She props her elbow on her knee and her hair falls to the side of her face, veiling her expression from me as she lets the handle of the bag slide off her slumped shoulder and to the ground. “Thanks. You can go now.”

I lean forward and try to catch her eye, but she won’t look at me, so I have no fucking clue what she’s thinking. I want to know and that’s not a good thing because it gives her some control over me.

I begin to back up the sidewalk and force myself to walk away, go back to my Jack Daniel’s, and women who don’t interest me enough to pull me back to them. But right as I’m losing sight of her, I spot her lowering her head onto her arms, looking so defeated I know I can’t leave her like this.

I backtrack my steps and halt beside her. “Violet, where are you going?”

Her chest rises and falls as she sighs deeply, keeping her face buried in her arms. “I have no idea.”

I feel the faintest acceleration in my pulse as I crouch down beside her and sweep her hair out of her face. “Do you need me to take you somewhere? Because I can. As a thank-you for last night.” What the hell am I doing?

Her eyes are closed, her face angled toward me. “I don’t need a thank-you,” she says. “I just need a ride… somewhere.”

Despite my initial reservations, the least I can do is give her a ride as thanks for getting me to my truck and not letting my dumb-ass get beat last night and for helping me get glucose pills in my system. “Okay, where do you need to go?”

“Just outside of town.” She opens her eyes and her pupils shrink as the sun hits them, absorbing any emotion with it. But for a concise instant, I see something in her: the very familiar feeling of helplessness—the same thing that drove me to the strip club looking for a fight. “It’s on one of the back roads just off the freeway… you take the road where the strip club is,” she says.

“Why were you walking down that road last night? And what made you stop at the strip club?”

“A freakish coincidence,” she states, searching my eyes for something.

“A coincidence?” I stroke my finger across her cheekbone and she doesn’t flinch or move away, staring at me like she stared up at me last night. “I’m not buying it.”

“Okay, you caught me. I was stalking you,” she jokes dryly, then shuts her eyes again. “I have a headache,” she mutters, breathing in and out.

I watch her sink farther and farther into herself, her lips part as she forces air into her lungs. It’s like watching someone break apart and I’m not sure if I want to fix her, try to catch the pieces, or step back and let them fall all over the ground. God, the look is tearing my heart in half. Needing to make her feel better, more than I need to make myself stay under control, I start to lean in toward her, to either kiss her or hug her… needing to touch her again… comfort her. She holds completely still, her expression neutral but her eyes widen. I still have my hand in her hair and I pull gently on the roots, causing her breathing to quicken. Her chest rises and falls and images of the things we could do together pour through my mind; things like what we did last night in my trunk. I could touch her again and remember it more vividly—soberly. Suddenly I realize I’m thinking of us together. I’m not thinking of just me getting off. I’m thinking of getting her off. This is no longer just about me anymore. I snap out of it, untangle my fingers from her hair, and straighten my legs to stand up. “Do you want me to carry your box to my truck?” I ask, trying to get my shit back together. I refuse go back to that place I used to live with when I was a kid and my mom controlled everything I did. And getting involved with someone, means giving up total control.