My fists ball at mysides.
Did you expect him to just sayit?
I could call him out rightnow.
Because he’s not only saving mylife…
He destroyed it in the firstplace.
“What about Annie?” I hear myself ask instead. “She loves musictoo.”
He shoots me a surprised look. “I don’t want her anywhere near the musicindustry.”
“The longer you ground her, the more she’s going to digin.”
“Says the kid who brought her home at two in the morningyesterday.”
My mouth snaps shut. How he knew about that I’m not sure. “She needed someone to talkto.”
Jax shoots me a look as we stop at alight.
There’s no reason for him and Annie to be anything but close. I’m starting to see what I couldn’t before—that the more she tries to let him in, the more he holds her away. She acts as if it’s fine, but it’s not. She’s hurting. I can feel it across the damned patio every night of theweek.
“This life can build you up, but it can tear you down even faster,” he says at last. “She’s a good kid. I want her to have the things shewants.”
“You want her to have the things you want her to have,” I correct. “You can’t fill a prison with diamonds and expect her to forget the door’s stilllocked.”
I think about the letter she’s been sitting on, what she told me about herchildhood.
Yeah, Jax asked me to keep an eye out for her, but that’s not why I hung out with heryesterday.
It’s not even why I kept herhome.
Somewhere between literally carrying her ass up the driveway and watching her walk away from me, I started to think about how she puts herself out there. She invites the world to reject her, practically demands it, and when it does, shehurts.
But it never occurred to me she did it by choice, that she was aware ofit.
Maybe there is something to putting your heart on theline.
We pull up to the gates at Jax’s house, the familiar rows of trees, and the gates swing wide automatically at the sensor in his car. “You’re here because you’re capable,” he says. “But more than that, you fit in. I knew it since the first time I saw you with your damned blue hair and your swagger sitting on my couch with mykid.“
My chest aches. This placeisstarting to feel like home. More than Philly everdid.
I reach into my pocket, fingering the card in myjacket.
“Call Zeke,” Jax intones, palming the steering wheel as we cruise up the long driveway, the gates closing silently once we’re through. “Not after graduation.Now.”
* * *
I’m changingout of my uniform into a jean skirt and a tank top after school when there’s a knock on my bedroomdoor.
Tyler’s on the other side in jeans and a T-shirt that clings to his body. His hair’s freshly dyed blue, probably something he did to kill time during his suspension, and his expression isdetermined.
“There weren’t any notes for English today,” I inform him, but he just holds out a musicbox.
“That broke,” I say, frowning. “It hit a light in the garden and cracked. I heardit.”
“And I fixedit.”