Her sweet smell envelops me and my body pulsates with the need to taste her, touch her, find that quick rhythm that was promised in that shared kiss.

Abby skims her fingers along my arm and it’s like fire flickering from her nails. “You scared to kiss me, Logan?”

No, not at all. My arm curls around her stomach and as I sit up, I press her into me. She grins, thinking she’s winning this game, but she’s not. I shift, guiding her body down, covering hers with mine, and right as her back is about to brush against the bed, I slow and make sure the contact with the covers is light, gentle.

I’m careful with her injuries, making sure that the bandaged area on her back is the last to touch and I lower my head, kissing the area above her exit wound, and her breathing hitches. I continue a slow trail along her collarbone and up her neck. Each taste of Abby is sweet and warm and makes me crave more.

When her head fully sinks into the pillow, Abby looks up at me in confusion. Her fingers in my hair, her hand cupping the back of my neck, her foot automatically hooked around mine. Our bodies are exactly where she wants them to be, where I want them to be, but the emotions are off—that’s because there are emotions. That’s because I’m no longer playing.

“No, I’m not scared to kiss you.” I nuzzle her jawline as I run my hand along the length of her waist. “I’m not scared to feel something for you, either.”

Abby’s shaking her head, yet her fingers knot in my hair, dig into my back. “You should go.”

“I will,” I say against her mouth. As I breathe out, she breathes in and our mouths meet. It’s soft and innocent in a way that creates a warm haze. The type where there are slight pulls, the type that will make our lower lips swollen, the type where it shows I care.

Abby’s slow to follow along, almost as if she’s learning how to kiss...as if she’s learning how to kiss like this.

Abby

My heart is drumming so loudly Logan has to hear it, has to feel it, but then a part of me is wondering if this is another dream, another moment where my mind has wandered into areas of fantasy...into the places that feel real, but when I wake up realize none of it had existed.

Those moments hurt—the dreams that felt real, to hold in your hands all that you secretly wish for and then open your eyes and experience the devastating loss of knowing that it was never mine.

Logan’s lips are strong, yet soft. Kissing me like I’ve never been kissed. Kissing me like I’m worth kissing. Kissing me in a way that causes my groggy soul to flutter its eyes open from its constant state of sleep, kissing me in a way that causes my body to melt into his, kissing me in a way that makes my blood that’s always cold to feel very, very excitably warm.

He caresses my face and the touch tickles and causes my cheeks to flush. Logan holds his body over mine, just the right mixture of weight and heat, but he’s careful, so careful. As if he’s frightened to break me, as if he’s hesitant to ask for more.

I shake. A quiver that starts in my head and roars down to my toes and I hold on to Logan, unsure of the reaction, terrified of what it means, more scared to let it go.

Logan lifts his head and his dark brown eyes are full of concern as they flicker over my face. “Are you okay? Did I hurt you?”

He goes to shift off of me, as if his closeness is the reason I could be in pain. Am I okay? No, and my hands hold him tighter, keeping him near, because deep within me I understand the problem. I don’t want him to go. I don’t want him to leave. I like Logan way too much.

Did he hurt me? He will. When he leaves my room. When he walks out the door. When he finally does what I ask.

Logan continues to study me for a moment, and against my wishes, he rolls off of me and is across the room to my dresser. I lean up on my elbows. “What are you doing?”

The shaking of pills out of a bottle. Logan returns with a closed fist and a bottle of water. I fall back on the bed. “I already took my antibiotics.”

Logan sits on the edge of the bed and holds out the painkiller and the bottle of water. “Take it. You’re in pain.”

Until he said it, I had still been living in that kiss, but the pain in my head and shoulder washes over me again. I close my eyes. I was right the first time, that kiss was a dream, just the type I had while still awake. “I can’t.”

“You’re not a junkie,” he says. “If that’s what you’re concerned about.”

“You don’t know if I’m a junkie or not.” I open my eyes. “And neither do I.”

“I know.”

“Logan...” I sigh. “You can’t know because I have absolutely no idea who I am. Me knowing first feels like a requirement for anyone else knowing anything about me at all. I’m not you. I don’t have myself figured out. I’m a girl with a fake name and a fake social security number and a fake birth certificate. I’m a ghost. I always have been. Occasionally, I just pretend to be real.”

Logan

Just pretend to be real... Her words are like a sharp knife to the throat. The pretending part—I get. More than she could understand. I often don’t feel real. Feel like a lie so I tell her the one thing that’s the truth. “I care for you, Abby.”

Abby reaches over and places her hand over mine, the one that still fists her pain medication. “I don’t have the luxury of being the girl who’s cared for or being the girl who can care back. I need money to pay for those nurses.”

The water bottle crackles in my hands. I’m stuck on how to ask this without it being insulting. “My grandpa had a stroke. After he got out of rehab, he lived at home with us for a while and when that didn’t work we put him in a nursing home.” A pause. “Medicare paid for it.”

Abby releases an annoyed breath and withdraws her hand. “How long was he there?”

My answer isn’t going to help my defense. “A few weeks.”

“Before he died?” she probes.

I nod, still hurting for my dad. It killed him to lose his father.

“I’m not talking a few weeks. She’s been this way for years.”

“There has to be another way,” I say.

“The dealing, this life—this is who I am. Who I was born to be. The reaper with pretty eyes and pretty hair.”

“Doesn’t have to be.”

Abby looks so damn exhausted and her movements are stiff—that pain, it’s there. “I’m not redeemable so stop thinking of me as fixable. I’m not some pathetic girl who needs saving. I’m willingly making these choices.”

“Why not put your grandmother in a nursing home? I’ll help you fill out the paperwork if that’s what your problem is. If you can’t pay for it, Medicare will.”

Abby winces as she props herself up onto the pillows. “Mac and I, we tried the nursing home route and it was a nightmare. Within a week, someone stole her clothes. All of them. The staff said another patient stole them. Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t, but the end result was that my grandmother was freaked out because every time she woke up, another thing of hers was gone. When I kept complaining, the staff began to claim the stuff wasn’t there to begin with. Know the night that really sucked? When I held my grandmother because she woke to find her mother’s diamond ring gone. Gone. Who is sick enough to steal a ring from an old woman in her sleep? You can try to blame another patient on that one, but I ain’t buying it.”

“Abby,” I say, but she cuts me off.

“I switched her facilities, but she was on Medicare and did you know that most decent nursing homes only have so many beds for Medicare patients? That the places where you want your loved one to be, the ones where they give a rat’s ass, cost money we didn’t have? So the new place? Grams fell. Out of her wheelchair. No one was watching her, and in case you’ve never been to one of these places, they strap people into their chairs to keep them from falling out because there aren’t enough people to watch them and somebody didn’t strap Grams into hers so she fell and she was hurt and she was in the hospital for days.

“She went back to the nursing home and I visited her to find her writhing in pain because one of her aids or nurses on duty was stealing her pain medication. Stealing it. And then when I demanded to see her prescription list, I found out that someone was ordering more pain meds than she needed and do you think she saw any of those? Nope, someone had formed their own drug ring at my grandmother’s expense.”

“Abby,” I try again and she keeps going.

“They gave her the wrong meds, they gave her too many meds, they didn’t give her enough meds, they tried to put her on things she didn’t need, doctors we didn’t request came, doctors we did need never showed, they let her piss and shit all over herself and wouldn’t clean her for hours. If I didn’t show up daily, they wouldn’t have even changed her clothes. They would have left her to rot with bedsores.

“She cried, Logan, every time I was there. Not understanding why I locked her up in that place, why I left her with people who yelled, who left her in the dark, and she begged me over and over again to bring her home so I did. I did what I had to do and I brought my grandmother home because they treat animals in zoos better than they treated my grandmother.”