I throw my hands up in defeat. Drinking, drugs—off the list. I can’t control my glucose with eating green vegetables. My rushes have to be the nonchemical kind. I’m crazy, but not suicidal.

Mom tsks. “Let him be young. We were young once.”

“And stupid.” Dad shoots Mom that look where it’s obvious he’s trying to remember why he fell for her. I’ve seen pictures. Mom was pretty—still is—and when she moved into Groveton, Dad was swept away by the shiny new girl. “Logan doesn’t need any more stupid.”

“We’ll, I’m fine with Logan doing and trying whatever he wants,” Mom says. “Pot, the band, baseball, a new school, a new girl. He should be free to experiment.”

Her answer for everything. She doesn’t believe in boundaries or rules or the American Academy of Pediatrics. There’s a good reason why I’ve lived mainly with Dad.

Dad stands and tosses his dishes, food and all, into the sink. The dish and fork clank against the metal. “What’s the plan, Logan?”

“It’ll be a couple of nights a week, but they mostly play locally. There will be some travel. Places two, three hours away.” I pause, knowing that this will be Dad’s deal breaker. “They’re playing a few days in Florida toward the end of summer.”

“And then what?” Dad stays near the sink.

I’m drawing blanks. “What?”

“Then what? What call am I getting next? That you were in a bar fight? That your head was split open by some drunk bastard? That next time you’re the one that was shot?”

“Logan’s a free spirit,” Mom interjects. “If you try to shut him into a small pen, he’ll only grow restless and hurt himself trying to break free.”

“He hurts himself anyhow. What he does is crazy.”

“It’s not crazy. It’s Logan figuring out who he is.” Mom offers Dad a patronizing smile and I shove my plate of half-eaten food away. This is why I keep my mouth shut around people.

“Detentions in school for pranks.”

“He was having fun.”

“Car accidents!”

“Speed is normal for boys.”

“Shooting off fireworks from his hands.”

“He was curious.”

“Crashing on an ER table because he didn’t give himself an insulin shot for a week.”

Bile sloshes in my stomach and Mom’s expression darkens. I was eleven and I didn’t mean for it to happen. It scared the shit out of Dad, it scared the shit out of Mom, and it scared the shit out of me.

Dad points at me. “Logan’s irresponsible and if he’s going to live with you when he heads to school in the fall, you’ve got to give him boundaries.”

Mom casts her worried eyes over at me and I immediately look away. Mom isn’t capable of handing down rules and if she was, she wouldn’t have a clue how to enforce them.

Dad dropped the bomb last week that if I’m going to school in Jefferson County that they’re going to switch up the custody arrangement. Live with Mom during the week and him on the weekends. The news was the equivalent to being kicked in the nuts.

“He’s not a bad son,” she whispers.

Just like Mom isn’t a bad Mom and Dad isn’t a bad Dad. We’re just wired differently.

Honestly, I’m too much like Dad and then too much like Mom. I often think the crazy inside me is the aftermath of the personality collision. Like how a tornado can happen when a cold front and warm front collide.

“You’re not,” Dad agrees.

I nod, thanking him for acknowledging me again.

“But you have got to stop with the impulses. Learn some control.”

Control. That’s what diabetes is—control. Control my diet. Control my routine. Control my insulin. Control my blood sugar. Control my exercise. Control, control, control and even when I do control it all—my levels still bottom out or go too high and it’s a constant seesaw that never goes away.

My cell dings and when I pull it out it’s West: Abby’s asking for you. Wants to know if you’re going to do what she asked. She’s on painkillers, but she’s agitated—won’t sleep. What do I tell her?

Me: Tell her I’ll do it

At least for today. Many things are changing in my life, and the situation between Abby and I is one of them, but odds are whatever she’s asking for can feed my need for crazy for the day. I scrape the rest of my food into the garbage then deposit my dishes in the dishwasher. “That was West. Abby’s asking for me.”

“We’re not done discussing the band,” Dad says. “Your future.”

“I got to do this.” Abby. The band. To have a little crazy in the control.

“Later then,” Dad says.

“Later,” I agree.

I accept and give a kiss on the cheek to Mom, grab my keys off the counter, and I’m out the door.

Abby

“Abby!”

I jerk awake and when I do, pain slices down my chest.

“Hide it,” Isaiah says, and I fist my fingers under the blanket. Damn that hurts. “You’ve got company you don’t want to appear weak in front of.”

Isaiah hovers over my hospital bed. Shaved head. Several hoop earrings in both ears. I was there when he got two of those rows. That seems like lifetimes ago.

When I ease up on my grip, Isaiah mutters, “Linus is here.”

I try to rub the confusion out of my head, but it’s useless. “Alone or with guests hiding in corners?”

“Says he’s alone.”

I scan the room. No Mac. No Logan. Not sure what to think about either situation. “Do you think he’s telling the truth?”

“He’s an asshole.”

Doesn’t answer the question yet it does. “I’ll talk to him, but do you mind staying near?”

Isaiah nods then whispers, “Pain meds?”

“No.” I’m already not thinking clearly, and I don’t need to be completely incapacitated with him. “Has it been days? Since I was shot?”

“Hours,” he answers. No wonder I feel like shit.

Isaiah leans his back in the door frame to my room and crosses his arms over his chest. The glare he gives down the hall is scary enough that the hair on my arms stands on end. A few seconds later Linus walks in, attempting to stare Isaiah down the entire time.

Isaiah doesn’t cower, neither does Linus. Two warriors on opposing ends of a battlefield. When Linus is far enough into the room, he turns his back to Isaiah and Isaiah steps out. If I know him, he’s right by the door.

Linus has dirty-blond hair, the coldest blue eyes on the face of the planet, and he moves like a predator. My father took him under his wing when Linus turned eighteen. Within a year, Linus was a prince to a king.

“If you carried a gun last night would have turned out different,” he says like we’re discussing a bad grade on an English paper.

“If I carried a gun, I’d be the killer.”

Linus turns the IV machine as if he’s interested in my heartbeat and recent blood pressure numbers. “Better the killer than dead.”

“I’m alive.”

“You’re soft,” he snaps.

Against every protesting muscle, I straighten in bed. “People fear me.”

Linus assesses me out of the corner of his eye. “Normal people fear you. Most on the streets fear you because of your father’s ghost or because of Ricky’s protection. People should shiver at your name because you’re death on wheels.”

I roll my eyes. “I stabbed whoever shot me. I should have gone lower. Cut off his dick.”

That causes his always black rain cloud of an expression to lighten to a drizzle. “Should’ve. He probably wouldn’t have gotten a shot off then. In the end, good move with the blade. Hitting a running target is hard to do. That probably saved your life. Know what would save your life next time?”

“Aliens?” I ask.

His frozen expression mocks me, a reminder that he never finds me amusing. “A gun.”

“I make the money.” I dismiss his gun with a princess wave of my hand. “You enforce the rules. There’s a reason for the system. My clients would wet their pants at the sight of you.”

“I hear they wet their pants at the sight of you, too.”

I’m too tired to decide if he means that as dirty or not. “It takes more than one chess piece for checkmate.”

Linus eases into a chair near the wall and I spot that ghost lift of his lips that I sometimes mistake as a smile. “Rule number eight.”

My body trembles from the exhaustion of being upright and I collapse back to the bed. Rule number eight.

“Everyone else on our side make it out okay?”

“Yeah. Tommy took a hit, but he’s good.”

Tommy, the guy watching my back in the bar. He’s Linus’s equivalent to a best friend, or would be if Linus did friends. He doesn’t and often refers to Tommy as his trusted protégé. Best friend, not a friend, protégé—doesn’t matter. I grant Linus a few seconds to dwell on the fact that Tommy got hurt.

“We’ve got problems,” Linus announces.

My eyelids grow heavy, but the pain in my upper left shoulder helps me stay awake. “Eric has problems. That was pretty close to point blank and one of his people didn’t make the kill.”