“Here, listen to this one,” Merc says. “It’s a good song.”

He passes me his huge over-ear Bose headphones, a gift from all of us to him for his eighteenth birthday. I swear the guy studies, meets his friends, eats and sleeps and takes a dump without taking them off.

Curled up in a kitchen chair, my mug of tea steaming in front of me, with my brother and new music to check out, I’m in my happy place. No classes today, as we’re supposed to be studying for midterms, and I’m chilling out.

Note the “supposed.” I should be studying, but I need this time. I need to collect my thoughts. Because I don’t know what to do.

Finding out why Jarett joined the gang, getting a glimpse inside his head and way of thinking, isn’t enough to redeem him. Or to rescue him. It’s obvious he believes he’s doing the right thing. How do you rescue someone who can’t see the sinkhole opening under his feet?

The moment I put on the headphones, the beat thumps through me, echoing in my skull and every bone in my body. Whoa. Nice one.

“Good for when you can’t sleep,” Merc says, smiling.

“You mean you can’t sleep because you get such a mega headache from this song.”

“Oh suck it up, Ginger. You’ll love this song. Listen to it first, and then pass judgment.”

“We shall see about that, Mercurius. And I’ve never been a ginger. Not about to start now.”

“Pardon me, missus,” he says with a terrible British accent. At least I think it’s British. “I see now ye’re a propah blond.”

“God, please tell me this isn’t how you come on to girls.”

He looks offended. “I don’t need to fucking come on to girls. I’ll let you know, girls flock to me.”

“That so.”

“Ah-huh. All the time. They go on their knees, begging to go out with me.”

“Why am I not convinced?”

He grimaces. “Some sister you are. No support at all.”

“Aw, Mercky. You’re cute. I’m sure girls are falling over their feet to get to you. They’re so blinded by you they can’t see any other guy. They cry out your name as they come on someone else’s cock and can never find true love because of you.” I pause for dramatic effect. “How was that?”

“Screw you.” He pouts and makes sad eyes at me. “That was fucking awful.”

I laugh. “I thought it was being supportive.”

“That’s it, I’m not making any more playlists for you.”

“Aw, don’t be that way. You know I adore your playlists.”

He grins. “You’d better.”

But he knows it’s true. We share the same taste in music. He says he taught me everything I know in that respect. I insist I am the one who got him hooked on alternative pop, hip hop, and indie rock music since I’m older by a year.

It doesn’t really matter.

Merc and me, we’re close. Closer than we are with Octavia. She was always kind of like a second mom to us. But Merc and me, we’re thick as thieves. We’re like twins. He knows about stuff that happened to me. I know about stuff that happened to him, that nobody else knows.

And we pretend we know nothing and that nothing ever happened, that life is a unicorn’s rainbow fart and smells of roses.

That’s how we roll. It’s easier to get through the day—and night—that way. Besides, I kind of like the smell of roses… and my illusions. They’re warm and cozy like this kitchen. I try not to think I lost my trust in men, in people, my confidence in myself, and that now I fake it every day.

Try not to remember that the only place I’ve ever felt safe since we left Destiny is Jarett’s arms. That all I want is to grab my phone and call him, find him, meet him.

“Gigi? Hey.” Merc tugs the headphones off my head. “What did you think of the song?”

“It’s awesome,” I say, and can’t even remember the melody. “Gimme.”

“Goes on your new playlist,” he says with a grin, pleased with himself. “Songs for the winter.”

“That sounds sad.” I take a sip from my tea. I think of Jarett’s bare apartment and shiver involuntarily.

“Nah. Winter is a good time. You know, a time to rest and reflect, a time for secret changes under the surface.”

“Wow.” I gape at him. “That was deep.”

“Read it somewhere,” he says sheepishly, cheeks coloring, and jams the headphones on his head. “Going to make that playlist.”

“You do that,” I mutter, watching him as he leaves the kitchen, blond hair standing up in all directions.

I’m happy when I make him smile. When I see joy in Mom’s, or Octavia’s eyes. I want the people I love to be happy.

I want Jarett to be happy, and safe.

But he’s not mine to care for, to worry about, to want and to love. My trail of clues has gone cold.

So he’d do anything about his adopted family. So maybe he’s steadfast and true to those who help him.

But why should I be glad when he seems to care more about his creepy asshole of a brother than me, or even himself? It sounds like his promise is an excuse to stay on the wrong side of the law. And that’s not good.

Not good at all.

* * *

When I return to the kitchen later to make myself a sandwich and grab a glass of milk, my thoughts still on the same man, the same dilemma, I find Mom baking.

Figures I was so lost in my own mind I didn’t notice the divine smells wafting up. My stomach must have noticed, though. No wonder it’s been rumbling for the past hour, demanding to be fed.

Mom glances up from the row of perfect cakes she’s baked and smiles. “Hi, sweetie. Merc said you were home today. Feeling okay?”

“Yeah. I took a nap. Speaking of which…” I frown. “Have you talked to Tati? I had a weird dream that the baby was yelling at her through her belly that he wanted out.”

She snorts softly. “You’re probably just antsy, like I am. But your sister is fine, I just talked to her. Now come help your mom ice these cakes. You’re so much faster than me.”

I shuffle closer in my fluffy bunny slippers and tug my overlong sweater down, over my LaRue leggings with their print of cute Dead Sugar Skulls. “Move over, heathen. Only I can ice these cakes properly.”

“Thank you.” Laughing, she kisses my cheek and busies herself getting another cake out of the oven.

“Wait, how many cakes have you baked, Mom? This has to be illegal. I know you don’t get paid for this, but you’ve practically opened a bakery in our kitchen.”

“Shush now. Get to work, or I’ll never be ready on time. And no dipping your finger in the icing!”

How does she always know?

“Doing the usual rounds today?” I grab the spatula and get to work.

“Yeah. Least I hope so. I got no driver today, so I’ll have to call a cab. Always harder. I wish I’d learned to drive. You should, Gigi.”

“I’m planning on it. Matt said he’ll teach me after the baby arrives.”

She arches a brow. “He’d trust you with a car?”

“Psht.” I slather icing on the cake in front of me. “Why wouldn’t he? He can see how careful and studious I can be.”

“Have you met you?” my mom, the traitor, says. “And did you notice you just spread icing on the table, too?”

Crap. I shake my head and bite my lip not to laugh. Whatever. My brother-in-law is pretty awesome. He’ll teach me, and then someday I’ll buy my own car.

Mom wants that. She wants for me to be independent, because she never really was. By the time she moved away from her home and parents she never talks about, and got a job, she became pregnant with Octavia, then me, and then Merc. She was trapped from the start. No time or money for driving lessons, let alone buying a car.

She’ll never tell you she was trapped, though. She talks of my childhood with such joy, she makes it sound like a perfect time, when I know for a fact she was working three jobs to make ends meet.

While our douchebag of a father had it all and never gave her a cent to help out. Never acknowledged us. Never wanted anything to do with us. Instead, he trained his own son from his legal wife to look down on us and call us names on the street.

“What’s wrong with you today, girly?” Mom is frowning down at the cake I’m supposed to be icing. “You’re not concentrating. Want me to do that?”

“No. Sorry. Just a lot on my mind.” I focus on finishing the cake, then start on the next one. “Going to visit Becky again? Your friend who lost her memory?”

“Every week,” Mom says. “It’s Alzheimer’s.”

“Right. I remember now. Must be so hard for her family. Does she have kids?”

“Oh, I bet you remember the Lowes. Lived just down the street from us. Old house with a big tree outside and a swing.”

I freeze, the spatula gripped tightly in my hand. “Becky Lowe? That’s her name?”

“Oh yes. Becky Lowe. She has two boys, Sebastian, and… what was the other one’s name?” She taps her forehead, frowning. “James? Jack?”

“Jarett,” I whisper. “Jarett Lowe.”

“That’s the one.” Mom gives me a sunny smile. “See? I was sure you remembered them. Good people.”

Oh my God. What do you know: sometimes clues come from the person you’d least expect.

“Tell me about him,” I say, putting down the spatula on a handy plate.

“Who?”

“Jarett.”

“Tell you what, honey?” Mom gives me a perplexed look. “What’s this about?”

“Nothing. Just… curious. You know.”

She’s still staring at me.

“Look.” I move the spatula around on the plate, making patterns with the icing. “We used to be friends, but we lost contact when we moved, and I met him recently, and I’ve always wondered about him.” Bracing breath. “I know he was adopted, okay? I just wanted to know about his family before that, and… well, anything else about him.”

Her face softens. “You were friends, weren’t you? I remember now, you used to walk home from school with him. Such a nice boy.”

“Nice?” My ears perk. Clues, clues. That’s the first time anyone has referred to Jarett that way. “Why you say that?”

“Why do you look so shocked? Goodness.” Mom shakes her head and starts packing one of the cakes in a cardboard box. “You liked him, back then.”

“Yeah, but…”

But now I’m not sure I ever really knew him.

“Well, I don’t know what he’s doing now,” Mom says, wiping her hands on her apron. “But I remember that boy. He helped me carry the groceries sometimes from the car, especially if it was something heavy. And helped poor Becky so much after her husband died.”

My heart is thumping madly. “Mr. Lowe died? I don’t remember that.”

“It was after we moved. My friend Alice told me all about it, and that was about the time Becky was diagnosed with the Alzheimer’s. Progressed pretty fast, too.”

Oh God. “What about Jarett? Is there anything else you can tell me?”

“Not much, honey, sorry.”

“Oh come on, Mom… Anything at all.”

She tsks. “Help me pack the cakes, and I will think about it.”

Pouting, I put down the spatula and help her place the finished cakes into boxes. “Are you thinking hard?”

She lifts a brow at me. “I just don’t know much about him. Becky said she had to take him in when she met him. Such a good boy, she said. And so unlucky in life. He deserved another chance.”

“Why unlucky?” I put the last packaged cake inside a bag. “What did she mean?”

“Lost his parents early, then got adopted, and that family got rid of him for some reason, or so she said. Can’t remember very well.” She sighs. “That poor boy. And now Becky is fading, too. Such a pity.”

I nod, dumbstruck, her words spinning inside my mind like small hurricanes.

That poor boy.

A nice boy.

Wait a sec. I decided it was over, right? This crush, this infatuation, this conviction he’s more than he shows to the world. That he’s a good guy, and even more… that he feels anything at all for me. Anything like what I feel for him.

Which I shouldn’t feel. And in any case, what does it all mean? That’s Jarett’s past, not his present. What do I do now?

“Let me take the cake to Mrs. Lowe,” I tell Mom. “Please?”

It’s a split-second decision. I’m good at those, it seems—like asking Jarett to watch out for Sydney. Like having sex with him whenever I see him.

Mom gives me a suspicious look. “Why the sudden burning desire to run my errands?”

“Just want to help. You said you have no ride today. I’ll just Uber over and deliver them all.”

“Gigi…” Mom glares at me. “The truth.”

“What, you don’t believe I want to help you?” I make puppy eyes. “Please.”

“Oh God.” Mom says, and her gaze softens. “Since you were a baby you’ve had me wrapped around your finger, missy. You can go, sure. But I still want to know why.”

I square my shoulders. “Because you were right, I remember Becky Lowe. I knew her. And I knew Jarett. I want to see them.”

“Honey…” Her expression twists a little. “She won’t recognize you.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

She looks like she wants to say more, but thinks twice about it and stops herself.

That’s good. I don’t even know what my arguments are. Don’t know what I expect. But this is my clue, my only real clue so far, and I’ll follow it, see where it takes me.

“Let me help you with the bags,” she says finally, and I walk out with her as if in a dream. I ask for an Uber, and it’s there in three minutes, not giving me time to gather my thoughts or question myself any more.

A good thing, as it’s all kinda crazy. Going off to deliver a cake to Jarett’s adopted mom who won’t even know me.

What do I expect to find?

The Uber arrives, and I climb inside, Mom passing me the bags and pressing a piece of paper in my hand.

“The names and addresses,” she says. “Good luck.”

Maybe she senses what’s going on inside me better than I do, that this is more than passing curiosity, or a whim. That this is important to me.

Then we drive away, and I’m alone and free to finally sit back and marvel at the things I’d do when it comes to Jarett. Just for a chance to find out more about him and what makes him tick, a chance to understand him and figure out why I feel the way I do about him.

To prove I’m not so crazy to still want him after all.

* * *

Mom has baked five cakes total. I deliver them all, but deliberately leave Jarett’s mom for last.

You won’t find out anything else, I tell myself again. What else is there to find anyway? So his mom is sick. What does it change, huh?

Holding on to the cake, the coffee cake Becky Lowe loves—does she remember that, I wonder?—and sit still and tense in the backseat of the Uber as we roll toward the nursing home. It’s starting to rain outside, a drizzle and wind, and heavy dark clouds that promise more water.

I’ll just drop off the cake and go home, crawl under my favorite fluffy blanket on the sofa and watch something on TV. Something funny, to take my mind off my heart’s troubles. Maybe a rerun of Teen Wolf, or a new episode of Shadowhunters. Something with hot guys running about, preferably shirtless, to take my mind off a specific real-life guy who might as well be a ghost, for all I know about him.

A very sexy ghost, to be sure, with a very solid—

God, forget it. Better get this over with and head back home, to my familiar routines, my brother and my mom and all the good things in life. Maybe hit the books for my classes, read a good book, listen to the new playlist Merc made me instead of chasing after bad boys, no matter how handsome.

I’m so frigging nervous.

The Uber drops me off right outside the entrance, for which I’m grateful as the rain has grown stronger, pelting down on us. I quickly step inside and drip my way to the front desk, equally grateful for my favorite red waterproof jacket.

“Hi,” I tell the receptionist, a pretty woman with a bob of dark hair. “I have a cake for Mrs. Becky Lowe? From Maggie Watson. I’m the delivery girl today.”

Shut up, Gigi.

Nerves. No reason for nerves. Come on.

“You can leave the cake here with me,” the girl says. “Or did you want to visit Mrs. Lowe?”

“I…I’m not sure.” Shit. For some reason, it feels like cheating, visiting a person I remember when she wouldn’t remember me. “It’s okay. I’ll leave it here. You’ll take it to her?”

“Sure. Don’t you worry about it. Poor lady, she’s been getting worse and worse. Her son comes by almost every day, and he’s devastated.”

“Really? Sebastian?”

I can’t picture him caring, though this is his mother we’re talking about, so…

But the girl shakes her head, and her cheeks turn red. “Sebastian? No, his name’s Jarett.”

I stare back at her and two things occur to me:

One, she has a crush on Jarett, and I want to headbutt her for it.

And two, Jarett has been visiting his mom, when her own flesh and blood hasn’t. Why doesn’t that surprise me?

Then it hits me why. Not just because Sebastian is a prick—but also because Jarett isn’t. He’s kind and protective. I knew that back when we were friends.

Looks like that side of him is still there.

“Do you know when he’ll come by next?” I place the cake on the desk, in its box and plastic bag, and do my best to sound nonchalant and only vaguely interested in the answer.

“Oh, he used to come in the morning or noon, but now he got a different job, and he comes in the late afternoon. In fact, you just missed him. He left a minute ago.”

He did?

“Thanks.” Forgetting all about the cake and appearances, I hurry back out into the rain. I have a feeling it’s important to see him now, right now.

A rational voice in my head says he must be far away by now, by cab or Uber or the bus, or even on foot. How will I catch up with him?

Dashing through the rain, my purse held over my head, I scan the street right and left, barely able to see in the downpour. My excitement starts to fade when I realize the rational little voice was right. No way can I find him. I was a little too late—and I don’t even know what I’d tell him, just…

There’s a guy standing in the rain on the sidewalk. Despite the rain that’s blurring my vision, something about him feels familiar.

Blinking cold water from my eyes, I start toward him.

“Jarett,” I whisper, and as I take a closer look at him, my heart starts to pound. “Jarett.”

He’s soaking wet, standing there like he doesn’t know where he is, water sluicing down his dark hair and over his face and clothes. I grab his hand, and it’s ice-cold.

His gaze slowly swings around to me. He blinks, long lashes wet. He blinks again, as if trying to wake up. “Gigi?”

“What are you doing out here?” I tug on his hand. “Are you okay?”

He just keeps staring at me, and yeah that was a dumb question. He’s obviously not okay.

“Come with me,” I tell him. “We’re going home.”

“Wait, Gigi.”

“My home,” I clarify. “To dry you, warm you up and eat cake my mom baked. Best thing for the soul, I swear.”

His mouth twists, and trembles, and suddenly all I want is to hug him. The receptionist’s words come back to me—about his mom getting worse, about him being devastated.

My heart aches for him.

“Why?” he whispers. “Why are you doing this?”

Because the good things you do deserve a reward, even a small one like this. Everything you do has a consequence, good or bad, and you visiting your mom, caring for her, deserves cake.

But I don’t say that, not even sure it makes sense.

I just tug on his hand again, and request an Uber on my phone. “Let’s just go.”