Logan’s one of the good guys and I’ve dragged him too far into my dark life.

“Your dad just took you?” Logan asks. “That sounds...”

“Illegal?” I finish for him with a fake smile. “Yeah, Dad was okay with that. Not sure how it all happened, but a few phone calls and Grams was the owner of a brand-new non-potty-trained three-year old, complete with a birth certificate and social security number. I’m like an American Girl doll on crack. Did you know that my paperwork says I’m adopted from overseas?”

Logan cracks a grin because what else do you do to this? “Where from?”

“China,” I answer, and he laughs.

“I’m lying on the overseas adoption part, but not on the rest of it.” It feels strange to distinguish for people the truth from the lies. “It’s all crazy, but the messed-up part? It’s weird to not know who I am. Like what my real name is or see my real birth certificate, assuming I had either of those. Sort of sucks to think that no one gave a crap that a three-year-old disappeared off the face of the planet.”

Logan shifts from one foot to another, his hands shoved into the front pockets of his jeans. It’s happening. He’s pulling away and that creates an ache deep in my chest that hurts worse than my shoulder or head.

“How do you know he’s really your dad?”

“I don’t, but you have to admit this...” I motion to the pink room with stuffed animals “...is a lot better than what I could have grown up with. Bathing and eating, as it turns out, are seriously cool.”

Logan nods as he scans the room. “What happened to your mom?”

“Don’t know, and I can honestly say, I don’t care.” Dad took a picture of me and my mother from that day to remind me of where I came from in case I ever got the silly notion to search for my birth mother.

Dad wasn’t lying about our condition, wasn’t lying about how I was dirty from head to toe, had absolutely no meat on my bones, and had hair that may have never been washed or brushed.

Logan’s trying to swallow everything I’ve said and he’s choking on it. There’s a reason why I lie so often. People can easily accept a lie over the truth, especially when the truth deals with things they just don’t want to acknowledge. Like drugs or poverty or abandonment or me.

Lies can be pretty and sparkly. The truth is often disgustingly raw.

People turn away and tune out what is raw and real, they turn away from the truth.

Sitting on the bed so exposed to Logan isn’t quite working for me anymore so I lie back on the bed and throw an arm over my eyes. If I lie here long enough, I can try to believe the lies I tell myself. Like I’m okay. Like Grams is okay. That someday, I’ll have normal.

“Do you mind turning off the lights when you leave? And I’d also appreciate it if you could keep all of this to yourself. My father worked hard to keep my grandmother a secret and so have I. You don’t have to think of it as doing it for me. Do it for her.”

Logan

I do what Abby asks, flipping off the light, and then do something she doesn’t expect. I slip onto the bed next to her, on my side, and watch her in the glow of the streetlight seeping in from the curtains. Her arm remains over her face, and her chest rises as if she’s sucking in deep breaths. Over a week ago, I would have said that Abby wasn’t capable of pain, wasn’t capable of tears. Now? I have no idea how Abby’s capable of a smile.

“Go,” Abby says quietly.

But I don’t. I stay.

“It’s nowhere near the same.” I pause, intending to tell her about the diabetes, but then change my mind. The diabetes scares people and the last thing Abby needs is scared. “But when my parents separated I was seven, I didn’t see my mom for three months. Both Mom and Dad play it off now, but I knew then it’s because...for a time...she didn’t want me.”

Abby’s arm falls from her face to the bed and her head flops in my direction. “You have never talked about their divorce.”

I shrug and think back to when Abby realized at the bar that I don’t talk much at all.

She rolls to her side, mirroring my position. “Do they hate each other? Do you see her? What’s your dad like?”

I scratch my head, feeling like I’m drowning under the questions. “They get along now. Took Dad a few years though. Mom left him for someone else and Dad was still in love with her. It’s not something he got over easy.” It’s not something he got over.

“Is she still with the other guy? And what changed her mind about you? And—”

“Why are you pushing me away?”

She blinks at the change of subject. “Because around me, you’re in danger.”

I waggle my eyebrows at her. “I thrive on danger.”

“This isn’t a game. It’s time for me to stop pretending that I’m a normal girl who has a normal life with normal friends.”

“We’re normal? Our group? That would be a first for any of us.”

She pushes my chest with enough force it nearly rocks me. “I’m not playing! What do I have to do to make you realize we can’t be around each other anymore? Do you think I like hurting you? Do you think this is fun for me?”

I snatch her wrist when she goes to nudge me again and the seriousness in my voice startles even me. “No, I don’t.”

A strand of her hair sticks to her cheek, and I lift it off, to behind her shoulder, then permit my fingers to skim along her arm. Abby edges closer, almost like she wants me to touch her as much as I crave the contact.

The instinct is to gather Abby near, and I don’t claim to understand it. I’ve dated other girls, kissed more than my fair share, but I’ve never been drawn to any of them like I am to her. As always, there’s a push and a pull between us. The need to devour her, yet run away.

Her hazel eyes look up at me and there’s a ton going on there. Confusion, pain, and as my fingers continue to caress her arm, a hint of lust. The lust I understand, but I don’t claim to be very good at any other emotion. Problem—neither is Abby. We’re both in uncharted territory.

“I can’t be your friend, Logan. I can’t be Isaiah’s friend or Rachel’s friend or West’s friend. You could have been killed and I’m not okay with that.”

“You could die.”

“That’s my choice. This little convo between us changes nothing. So if it makes you all feel better, I like all of you, but we’re no longer friends. Nonnegotiable. So, see ya.”

“According to you, I’m in danger because I saw who shot you. How is walking away from me helping my situation?”

“I made a deal with Linus. He’s claiming he saw the shooter and that you never entered the alley. Congrats, you are officially out of danger.”

Abby does the motion like she’s cleaning her hands and then shows me her palms, like we’re done, but I’m not done. “What was your end of the deal?”

“Not your problem.”

“It is my problem.”

Abby gives that dismissive smile—that one that crawls under my skin. The one that suggests she knows it all and the rest of the world understands nothing. “Explain to me how exactly my problems are your problems? We met through a mutual friend. We flirt. We play. Nowhere along the way did my problems become your problems.”

“We kissed,” I say and that man-eating grin only grows.

“You’re right, we kissed, and we both know it didn’t mean a thing. You and I don’t do attachments and what you’re asking for sounds an awful lot like caring.”

Her words leave a mark and it’s not one I’m proud of. She leans up on her elbow and that mask I’ve seen several times on her face, the one she wears when she works, when she’s on the streets is plastered on her face. “Can you do that, Logan? It’s one thing to play with me, but can you care for me?”

“You don’t think I care?” I rise up, looming over her.

“I think you’re mistaking attraction for caring. I think you’re a good guy who wants to save the girl, but I don’t need saving.” Abby slides into my personal space, her fingers walking erotically up my chest. “Can you fall for the drug dealer, the girl who doesn’t mind kissing one guy and then another, the girl who gets in cars with strangers, rides with them, and then leaves them so they can get high? Can you fall for a girl who stuck a knife in a guy? The girl whose father was a dealer, a killer? Whose mother was a junkie and a whore?”

“You’re more than that.”

“I’m not. You were just hoping for more.” Her fingers reach the collar of my shirt and she eases her head close to mine. So close our noses nearly touch, so close that our lips are a breath’s distance apart. So close my fingers twitch with the idea of grabbing onto her thighs and drawing her body on top of me so that her hips are settled directly over mine.

Abby’s eyes bore into me as she whispers, “It’s attraction, Logan. That’s it. We’ve been a slow burn for months so instead of wasting this time talking about things we can’t change, let’s return to what we’re good at—let’s play.”