“Shut up, dickhead.” Rolling my eyes, I reached down to pick up my wet clothes. I’d already gone into the nearby woods to change into jeans before calling Piper out of the water.

“What’s he talking about?” Piper just stood there, but I didn’t spare her a glance.

“Tate. Jared’s neighbor,” Madoc offered. “She goes to our school, but she left for junior year,” Madoc offered and then turned to me. “So, where is she? I miss that girl.”

He sat up, and even though I buried my face in my phone, I knew he was watching me.

Idiot. Dick. Fucking ass**le friend.

I shook my head. “Her dad’s working in Germany, okay? He got put on an assignment there for seven months and won’t be home until December. He said she’ll be starting the school year there. Alright, dickhead-that-has-to-be-in-everyone’s-business?”

Mr. Brandt’s company had sent him to Germany last spring, so I’d been checking on the house and collecting mail since May.

Madoc looked at me like I just told him he couldn’t have ice cream for dessert. “Bummer, dude. But she’s probably thrilled,” he added. “She hated us.”

A twinge of amusement crept into my chest. Yeah, she sure did.

When Mr. Brandt had told me about his trip, I’d had another party at my house that night. Instead of getting drunk elsewhere, I had no problem getting wasted at home. And it helped.

I’d expected Tate to be back from France this past June when the school year ended, but when I found out that she wouldn’t be back until December now, I wanted to slam someone against a wall.

I loved hating her, and I wanted her f**king home.

But I just swallowed the ache like I’d been doing since last fall. I’d gotten used to going through the motions and pretending that shit didn’t matter.

And it was time to dive deep again.

“Let’s go.” I grabbed Piper’s hand and started for my car.

“But I’m still wet. I need to change,” she whined.

“Yeah,” I said, smiling, “and I’m going to help.”

The roads were slick as hell. It hadn’t rained much this summer, and all of the oil buildup on the street had me constantly fishtailing.

But it’s not like I had the sense to slow down, either.

I sped up onto my driveway and into the garage, even though I knew I shouldn’t be in a rush. Nothing waiting for me but quiet at my house, and I didn’t like quiet.

Closing the garage, I walked through the door leading to the kitchen, peeled off my black T-shirt, and threw it into the laundry room basket. Piper was all over it.

“Hey, man,” I greeted Madman as he came racing down the stairs. “Come on.”

Opening the backdoor so he could do his business, I left it open and ran upstairs to plug in my dead cell phone.

As soon as I’d turned it on, I saw that I had a voicemail from Tate’s dad.

Why is he calling?

We’d just texted a few days ago. He’d checked in on me and his house.

I wasn’t sure what he wanted now, but either way, I wasn’t calling him back tonight.

I jerked my head, a shrill scratching against my window panes causing me to jump.

“Goddamn tree.” I tossed my phone on the bed and stalked over to pull up the blinds. This tree between Tate’s and my window was a f**king nuisance. We constantly had to trim it, because it was threatening to puncture holes into the house. I’d told my mother this spring to just have it cut down, but it was technically on the Brandt’s property, and I guess they wanted to keep it.

Mr. Brandt kept it trimmed normally, but he never cut it back very far. I could still reach the branches, even after it’d been trimmed.

Pulling up the window and leaning out, I spied the branch sliding against the panes above me. With him gone, I’d have to take care of that tomorrow.

The rain was coming down in sheets and made everything glisten under the bright glow of the streetlights. I let my gaze wander through the maze of branches, shaking off memories of which ones I’d scraped my leg on or which ones I’d sat on with Tate.

I loved the damn tree, and I wanted it cut down.

And then…I didn’t even see the tree anymore.

My eyes caught sunshine in a midnight sky, and I f**king stilled.

Tate?

“What the hell?” I whispered, breathless and not blinking.

She was standing in her bedroom, leaning on the doorframe of her open French doors. And she was staring at me.

What the hell am I seeing right now?

She was supposed to be in Germany with her dad, at least until Christmas.

Every muscle in my body tightened as I supported myself on the window sill, but I couldn’t tear my eyes from her. It was like I was in an alternate universe, starving, and she was a f**king buffet.

She was home.

I closed my eyes for a moment and swallowed down my heartbeat that was creeping up my throat. I was sick, excited, and grateful all at the same time.

Jesus, she’s home.

She wore some little pajama shorts and a white tank top. Not really so different from what I’d noticed she wore to bed a year ago, but for some reason, the sight of her was like a raging fire through my chest. I wanted to rip through the f**king tree and peel all the clothes off of her and love her like the past three years had never happened.

Her hair blew around her, and I could feel her eyes, locked in shadow, on me.

My mouth was dry, and the rush of breath and blood through my body felt so damn good.

Until she backed up and closed the doors.

No. I swallowed, not wanting her to go away.

Go on. Go pick a fight, I told myself, but I shook my head.

No. Just leave her alone. She hasn’t been thinking about me, and I needed to get over it.

I was crawling the walls inside my head, knowing for fact that I needed to grow up and let her be. Let her go to school without rumors and pranks hovering over her. Let her be happy. We were nearly adults now, and this petty shit had to end.

But…

I’d just felt more alive in the past ten seconds than I had in a year.

Seeing that face, knowing I’d wake up to her blaring music and seeing her leave the house to jog in the morning…

My phone buzzed with a text, and I walked over to check it.

It was from Tate’s dad.

Change of plans. Tate’s home. On her own until Christmas. Give her back the house key, and be nice. Or else.

I narrowed my eyes, rereading the text over and over again.

I don’t even think I breathed.

She was alone? Until Christmas?

I closed my eyes, and let out a laugh.

And all of a sudden I was as thrilled as hell to wake up tomorrow.

Chapter 8

“Should I be afraid?” my mother asked as I walked back in from the garage carrying a small ax.

“Always,” I mumbled, passing her at the kitchen counter and heading up the stairs.

I’d decided to take matters into my own hands, instead of hiring someone, and chop off the smaller branches jutting into the house myself. The ax would do the job.

“Just don’t hurt yourself!” she shouted after me. “You were hard to make!” And I rolled my eyes at no one as I disappeared up the ladder leading into the attic.

She’d been halfway decent since getting sober. Once in a while she tried making jokes. Sometimes I laughed but not in front of her. There was still a lot of discomfort between us, a crack I had lost interest in repairing.

But we’d gotten into a routine. She kept herself level, and I did the same.

Crawling through the small window on our dark third floor, I maneuvered myself onto the tree and inched towards the trunk where the branches were thick enough to support my weight. I figured I’d sit on the inside and chop the extra growth off and then climb down to the ground when I was done. I needed to work top to bottom and eventually get to the branches at my window—the whole reason I’d started this job.

But as I raised the ax to start, I nearly dropped it.

“You think his treatment of me is foreplay?” I heard Tate’s aggravated shouting, and I halted.

What? Foreplay?

“Yes,” she continued, and I stopped what I was doing to listen, “it was foreplay when he told the whole school I had Irritable Bowel Syndrome, and everyone made farting noises as I walked down the hall freshman year.”

My eyes widened, and my pulse pounded in my neck. Was she talking about me?

“And yes.” She kept going, talking to someone I couldn’t see. “It was completely erotic the way he had the grocery store deliver a case of yeast infection cream to Math class sophomore year. But what really got me hot and ready to bend over for him was when he plastered brochures for genital wart treatments on my locker, which is completely outrageous for someone to have an STD without having sex!”

Oh, shit.

She was definitely talking about me.

Grabbing a branch above me, I pushed myself up onto my feet and climbed over to the other side, careful to stay out of the view of Tate’s open doors.

Another girl was talking, probably her friend K.C., and I caught something about fighting back.

I slid down another branch, starting to feel like a perv for snooping on their conversation. But hey, they were talking about me, and that made it my business.

“I’ve told you a hundred times, we were friends for years,” Tate spoke. “He went away for a few weeks the summer before freshman year, and when he came back, he was different. He didn’t want to have anything to do with me.”

And my fists clenched.

K.C. didn’t need to know my shit. Tate had no right airing our business like that.

The familiar swirl of piss and vinegar churned in my gut, and I felt my body warm.

“We’re going to have an amazing year.” Tate’s voice was lower now and stronger than before. “I’m hoping Jared has forgotten all about me. If he has, then we can both peacefully ignore each other until graduation. If he hasn’t, then I’ll do what I think is best. I’ve got bigger things on my mind anyway. He and that asshat Madoc can poke and prod all they want. I’m done giving them my attention. They are not taking my senior year.”

I’m hoping Jared has forgotten all about me.

And I’d almost thrown my future away in my need for her?

I’m done giving them my attention.

She hated me. She’d hate me forever, and I was a stupid f**king prick for wanting her when we were fourteen.

No one wants us. I knew I didn’t want you. My father’s voice crept into my head.

I climbed back over to my window and crawled through, not caring if they saw me. Tossing the ax onto the floor, I walked over and switched on my iPod dock to Five Finger Death Punch’s Coming Down and grabbed my phone to text Madoc.

Party tonight? Mom’s leaving around 4. My mother escaped every Friday night to her boyfriend’s in Chicago. I still hadn’t met the guy, but she almost always stayed the entire weekend.

Hell, yeah, he texted not a minute later.

Drinks? I asked. Madoc’s dad had a liquor store—or close to—in his basement along with a wine cellar. The guy was hardly ever home, so we took what we wanted, and I supplied the food.

Got it. See you at 7.

I threw my phone on the bed, but it buzzed again.

Grabbing it again, I opened up a text from Jax.

Dad called again.

Son of a bitch.

My father was finding ways to get Jax’s number, and he knew he wasn’t supposed to be calling him. Abusing him was one of the reasons my father was in jail, after all.

I’ll handle it, I texted.

Looking at the clock, I saw it was only ten in the morning.

Just go today, I told myself. Get it over with for the week, and you won’t have to go tomorrow.

These trips to my father’s ate at my insides, and I dreaded them. There was no telling what he’d say to me from one week to the next. Last time, he’d told me, in graphic detail, about how he’d dropped my mother off at the abortion clinic one day to get rid of me. And then, how he’d let loose on her when she hadn’t gone through with it. I didn’t know if the story was true, but I tried to just let the insults, stories, and taunts fly past me. Most of the time they did. Sometimes they didn’t.