“Relax,” Greyson says to Seth. “We’re all friends here.”

“Not really.” Seth eyes Violet up and down. “The only thing I know about her is that she can be a bitch sometimes to Callie, always making her stay out of the room when she ties that damn red scarf around the doorknob so she can have her way with helpless men.”

“ ‘Helpless men’?” Violet asks, crossing her arms over her chest, an amused twinkle in her eye. “Are you insulting your gender?”

“No, I’m saying you’re a vixen, who bosses people around,” he retorts and Greyson notably cringes.

Violet moves forward, tilting her head to the side. “So what if I’m a slut? It doesn’t make me a vixen.” She gives me a fleetingly glance that carries caution for me to keep my mouth shut about her virginity secret. A secret I tried not to think about all night, yet it was impossible.

“Yes, it does,” Seth snaps. “You’re mean and bossy and you don’t care about anyone but yourself.”

“Hey Seth, lay off her,” I tell him, shooting him a warning look.

Violet targets a death glare at me. “I don’t need you to stick up for me.”

“Yes, you do,” I assure her, which is clearly the wrong thing to say. Her eyes darken and Greyson gets a little worried, leaning back like Violet’s about to attack us all.

Seth unfortunately doesn’t pick up on the vibe, though, walking out from under Greyson’s arm and crowding Violet. “Yep, you don’t need anyone, right? You’re perfectly fine bossing people around.”

She unfolds her arms and steps forward, decreasing the space between them even more. I want to believe that she won’t do anything, but I’ve seen her do too many crazy things to make any assumptions about Violet Hayes. I decided to step forward and again I mentally curse myself for being so drawn to her.

“Hey.” I position myself between the two of them and look at Violet. “Let’s go get some coffee and get down to the apartment.”

“You’re fucking crazy if you’re going to live with her,” Seth says loudly and seconds later I hear a slap, probably from Greyson slapping him on the arm or something.

Violet stares up at me without so much as blinking and her lips are set together in a firm line. I can hear the soft intakes of each uneven breath as she fights to breathe soundlessly.

“Get out of my way,” she says evenly.

“Why?” I ask. “Are you going to go after Seth or try to leave?”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes.”

She blinks, speechless, but then shakes her head. “I’m going to leave.”

I shake my head and keep my feet planted. “Then I’m not moving.”

“Okay, then I’m going after Seth,” she says with a mocking attitude as she shuffles to the side. “Now please move out of my way.”

I mimic her move and she glowers at me through her thick eyelashes. “Luke…”

I lean in, lowering my voice. “I’m not going to let you out of here when you’re obviously upset and irrational.”

“I’m not irrational,” she argues and then swallows hard. “And what does it matter if I am?”

“Hitchhiking.” I count down my fingers the many reckless things I’ve seen her do over the few weeks I’ve known her. “Stepping into a bar fight, dealing drugs, jumping out of windows, letting some dude get rough with you.”

“I do those things when I’m rational,” she mutters.

“What? That doesn’t make any sense.”

She glances over my shoulder at Seth and Greyson. “Yes it does… now let me go.”

“Were you having a bad dream?” I whisper. “Is that why you woke up panicked?”

“I’m fine,” she hisses back, sucking in a slow breath. Her eyes water over and I get lost in her emotion, my hand drifting to her cheekbone to stroke her skin. She flinches against the contact as I spread my fingers over her cheek. “Please, just let me leave.” She begs. “Please, I just need a moment.”

Fuck. I want to kiss her so badly right now, pull her against me and just hold her. I could try and blame it on the fact that she looks so vulnerable and I just want to seize the opportunity to touch her when her guard is down, but it’s not like that. I know it the moment I step back and let her go by simply because she said it was what she needed at the moment. Nothing else.

She doesn’t thank me as she hurries by me and I don’t turn around to watch her go. I just did something solely for someone else, tossing all of my own needs aside, and I have no idea what to do with it.

Once I hear the door shut, I pull myself together before I turn around, pretending like nothing happened.

Seth immediately shakes his head at me, flabbergasted. “What the hell was that about?”

“Nothing.” I head over to my desk to clear it out. With each item I put in the box, the lighter I feel because soon I’ll have some place to live and it’s not back home. “She just needed a place to crash for the night.”

He strolls up and leans over to catch my eye. “Not that. That weird little moment you two just shared.”

“I don’t share moments with anyone.” I glance out the window, keeping an eye on the yard in front of the building for her to step outside.

“So you say,” Seth says. “And I’ve never seen you do anything that would contradict that, until just now.”

“Seth, maybe we should just let him be,” Greyson says, leaning against the door.

I gather my pens and notebook out of the desk, along with the leather case that carries my insulin and needles and place it into a box. I relax when I spot a girl with dark hair and red streaks hiking across the grass down below. “Yeah, please drop it. I don’t have enough alcohol in my system just yet.” I back away from the desk toward the mini fridge. “Speaking of which.” I bend down and open the fridge, taking out a bottle of vodka, hoping it’ll drown out what I just did.

Greyson sits down on the bed and shakes his head disapprovingly as I tip back my head and down a much-needed shot. Seth snatches the bottle from my hand and takes a large gulp himself.

“You two are such alcoholics,” Greyson says. “Seriously, this isn’t normal.”

“Normal is overrated,” Seth jokes, handing me the bottle.

I put it back in the fridge and shut the door. “So not that I’m not super thrilled you guys randomly showed up way too early in the morning, but why are you here? I thought you were headed to your house,” I say to Seth.

“Well, we were,” he replies, sitting down beside Greyson. “But then I got a lovely call from dear old ma a few days ago, saying that she’d changed her mind and that she wasn’t comfortable with Greyson and me staying with her, so now we’re crashing in town for the summer.”

“Why don’t you just go to Greyson’s?” I ask, crossing the room to the closet.

“Because his parents live all the way over in Florida,” he tells me. “And we don’t want to drive that far. Besides, I got an offer to work at the clinic and I really want to do it, being a Psychology major and all.”

“You’re a Psychology major?” I question. “When did that happen?”

“When I registered for fall classes and my counselor suggested I declare something other than undecided,” he says, with a grin. “And since I’m so smart in the human psyche department, I thought I’d give psychology a go. And Greyson got a new part-time job as a bartender down at Moonlight Dining and Drinks. He starts in a few days.”

I grab all my shirts off the hangers and put them in the box, keeping a gray one out to put on now. I don’t like how unorganized I’m being, but I’m in a hurry to get down to the apartments, just to have peace of mind that I have a roof over my head. “So then where are you two living? Because getting an apartment around here on short notice is pretty much a lost cause.”

“We just got a place up on Elm yesterday,” Seth tells me, getting up from the bed. “Which is why we stopped by… it’s got an extra room and we were wondering if you wanted to stay with us, since you don’t have place to stay.”

I glance up as I fold the top of the box shut. “How did you know I didn’t have a place?”

Seth grabs the tape from the dresser and hands it to me. “You told us the other night at Red Ink.”

Me and my drunken mouth. “Well, I’m good now.” I pull a piece of tape off and stretch it out over the box.

“Good living with Violet?” He exchanges a disbelieving look with Greyson and Greyson sighs. “Come on, you seriously want to live with her?”

“Maybe.” My chest constricts as I say it because I do. “I can’t just leave her with nowhere to go and she’s got a job and everything so she can pay half the rent.”

“She can get her own place,” Seth says as I tug the gray shirt over my head.

“No, she can’t,” I reply, running my hand over my hair. “She needs help.”

“Obviously.” Seth rolls his eyes. “She’s scary as hell.”

“I’m scary as hell.” I pick up my cologne off the desk and spray a little on me before adding it to another box. It seemed so hard to pack before, but it seems easy now that I know I’m not going back home.

“No, you just think you are.” Seth roams around my room, collecting my watches and sunglasses I have lying around, along with loose change. He hands them to me and I add them to another box I have open next to the foot of the bed. “Just crash with us. We can split the rent three ways and Greyson knows the guy running the place and he gave us one of the furnished apartments for cheap.”

“How cheap?” I clasp a leather band on my wrist that says redemption on it.

“Six hundred bucks for a two-bedroom and you’ll get your own room.” He smiles like it’s the best deal ever.

It’s about the same price as the Oak Section, yet much nicer and it has furniture. Shit, it’s tempting. Way too tempting. Plus the bills would be split three ways. I fold my arms, my jaw set tight as I dig out my old self that’s been hiding for days, the one that thinks of himself first because no one else ever has.