“November is getting off to a less-than-stellar start for one of metal’s favorite bad boys. We’re told we haven’t seen the worst of the videos yet, but according to a source close to Nikan Monture, guitarist for explosive band Preload, Nikan isn’t worried, as the footage is old.”

Nik glared at the TV and the peppy entertainment-show anchor. “How about you make the story about me being hacked? About someone stealing my personal property?” he muttered as he started the coffee brewing and the kettle boiling. It was too fucking early in the morning to deal with this shit. He needed his lemon drink for his throat and some coffee to kick-start the rest of him before he could deal with the fallout. Three women had already been in touch asking what actions he’d be taking. The videos were from his private collection, all filmed with absolute full consent, the most recent one having been added three years ago. He’d grown up and moved on, but had stupidly forgotten to hit DELETE.

“And ladies, for the record, having seen a handful of the videos, we’d say Preload’s hits are not the only huge thing in Monture’s life.”

Nik groaned as he ran his hand through his hair and tugged on the ends. He knew how big his dick was and, given the number of women who’d seen it, it wasn’t a secret that he was well endowed—but, fuck, did the world need to hear about it over breakfast?

He looked down at his phone and realized it was actually closer to lunch. Not that the time of day made any difference. He grabbed a lemon from the silver dish on the counter and began to slice it.

“Either way, between Preload’s upcoming North American tour and the leaked videos, I’m sure we’re going to see much more of Monture in the coming weeks.”

He reached for the remote and turned the TV off before he could do something stupid—like rip it off the ugly kitchen wall on which it had been hung just yesterday and smash it on the ugly linoleum floor. At least none of the gossip networks knew where he was for now, hidden away in the fixer-upper Cabbagetown house he’d bought four doors down from Elliott, a fellow Preload guitarist, and around the corner from the group home in which all of them had grown up.

The rest of the band, the men he called brothers, had his back, though they were as frustrated about the leak as he was. Dred, Preload’s lead singer, had texted to say reporters were still hanging around his driveway, waiting to see if Nik surfaced there. And Lennon and Jordan had gotten into a scuffle the previous day with the paparazzi on their way into Elliott’s place, which housed their recording studio.

Unable to join in on working on new material with them even though he was only four doors away, he’d attempted to work here, but the results lay in crumpled balls on the kitchen island. Nothing had come together; everything had sounded jarring. His block was getting worse, but he could never share with the band the reason behind it. How on earth could he tell them he didn’t really love metal or the music they played? He didn’t hate it, but it didn’t strike the same chord in him as it did the rest of them.

When they’d first started playing instruments together in the group home, metal had been all Jordan had wanted to play. It seemed to be the only reason he had for leaving the attic in which he otherwise hid. And it had been a way for Dred to channel his anger. As the eldest, who had always felt a familial sense of responsibility for them all, Nik had wanted them to be happy. He’d made it his mission to give them what they’d needed to survive. So he’d done what he did best. Faked it. For fifteen fucking years. For the sake of keeping his family together.

Angrily, he threw some lemon slices into the mug, then gripped the counter. Goddamn, those videos. . . . No, those moments had been his only windows of escape. They weren’t for the world to see.

Barefoot and wearing only a pair of jeans, Nik poured boiling water into a mug and added some honey. It was his routine every morning, some self-care for his vocal chords. Even though he only sang backup to Dred’s scorching vocals, his throat still took a beating. November and the Canadian leg of their world tour would be here soon enough, but first he had to survive today and deal with the record label’s cyber-security team, who were helping him find the source of the leak. Perhaps he should just stay inside and help the contractors he’d hired continue demolishing the upper level of his home.

When he’d first started looking for a new place, he’d looked at premium condos, all glass-and-chrome modern. All finished to luxurious specs. They were places where he imagined himself living the bachelor life of parties and regular visitors, with enough space too, for him to babysit Petal, Dred’s daughter, or their new baby that was on the way, or have Daniel, Elliott’s stepson, come hang out. On paper, the penthouse of the Tip Top Lofts or one over in Bloor West Village at the top of the South Kingsway had been exactly what he’d been looking for—perfectly laid out for entertaining and able to allow him the anonymity he craved when he wasn’t on stage. But within minutes of entering them with his realtor, he’d immediately known they weren’t right. None of them felt like home. Nowhere ever really had. The home he’d shared with the rest of the band was the closest he’d ever gotten to that feeling. So he’d cancelled the rest of the viewings, gone to the Starbucks at the intersection of Jane and Runnymede, and written out a list of what was important: Cabbagetown, where he’d grown up, a place he’d be relieved to return to after months on the road. Proximity to the men he thought of as family. And finally, a place he could work on with his own hands, make his mark on, and set down roots in. His forever home, even if he was the only one in it. A place he could retrofit with the layout he’d planned years ago with the woman he’d intended to spend the rest of his life with.

Until he’d blown his and Jenny’s forever.

He left the first-floor apartment and jogged up the stairs to the second floor, trying to ignore the faded yellow wallpaper.

Underneath the dirt and debris of a house that had stood empty for a year, it was easy to see that it had once been an incredible single-family home. The worn newel on the wooden post at the top of the stairs was evidence of just how many people had made their way up and down the staircase that ran through the middle of the house. It sucked that someone who had seen a business opportunity in the late eighties had ripped the building apart, turning it into six apartments. But even so, it had remained a place for families. One of the doorframes in apartment three had pencil marks showing the heights of a growing child, and the tenants in one of the ground-floor apartments had installed a small swing set in the backyard. Families had lived here, had grown here, had been happy here. Unlike his own, which had been decimated by the early death of his father and the murder of his mother.

He shivered at the memory of all the blood. Thinking about it—and the pain he had experienced—always made him feel sick to his stomach.

He pushed his thoughts aside as he opened the door to apartment four, bracing himself for the stale smell that always hit him when he entered. It wasn’t nasty, more like the damp smell that books took on when they’d been hidden in an attic too long. Bland walls that had yellowed over time contrasted with original dark-wood floors that had been scratched and scuffed by furniture and footsteps. A large pile of left-behind furniture was stacked by the door, ready for the Salvation Army. Lennon would be heading over soon to help him carry it all to the ground floor. Then they were going to rip out the kitchen.

One day soon, the apartments would be returned to a single-family home he could be proud of.

He caught sight of his reflection in the large mirror resting against the wall. Everything about his appearance looked the same as it had yesterday and the day before that. Yet his reflection was becoming less familiar somehow with each passing day. Nothing about him had changed. He was the eldest. The guitarist. The reliable backup vocalist. The patriarch. His days of being the wild child, the one trying to escape reality through hedonism, were over. Because no matter what he tried, there were still days when none of it felt enough. When nothing filled the growing pit in his stomach.

He felt Jenny’s absence more now than ever. He peered out of the room into the hallway and could imagine her bounding up the stairs toward him. She’d be smiling at him the way she used to, radiating with everything that was good, and caring, and sexy as hell—all just for him. They would have a bedroom of their own, and the kind of bathroom Jenny always used to dream about. One with candles, and bubbles, and no time limit because there wasn’t a queue of other kids waiting to use it like there always had been in their respective group homes.

But that was never going to happen. He couldn’t fix what he’d done the way he could fix up this house. Even after all this time, the pain of his stupidity hadn’t diminished. He knew deep down that a love like the one he’d felt for her, found with her, only came along once in a lifetime. But he’d lost his chance—he’d lost her. And clearly she didn’t want to be found. Nobody knew where Jenny was. And heaven knew he’d looked.

His phone vibrated in his pocket and he took it out.

X

Shit. It was from Albi, a twelve-year-old living in the group home in which he’d grown up, a home the band supported because of their love for Ellen, the woman who had raised them in it and still ran it now. X meant a kid was in a difficult situation from which he couldn’t get himself out. X meant a kid needed help.

Every time Nik saw X on his phone, relief raced through him that he’d read an article about a way to help kids extricate themselves from danger and proposed using it with the kids to Ellen.

Nik dialed Albi’s number and focused on the script they’d agreed on just in case someone was listening in. Someone who had the power to hurt Albi if they thought for one moment they were being set up.

“Hello.” His voice was shaky, unusual for the cocky street kid.

“Albi, it’s Nik. There’s a problem at the home, and I have to come get you. Where are you?”

“On Bremner in front of the Jays stadium, by gate five.”

Nik placed his cup on the windowsill and ran back down the stairs to apartment one, into which he’d moved while he was renovating. “I’m on my way, kid. Ten minutes, fifteen max.” Nik hung up the phone and resisted the urge to reassure Albi that everything was okay, that he’d be there soon, that he needed to stay strong and not do whatever it was he felt uncomfortable about. But doing so would give too much away if someone else was listening in on Albi’s call.

It was the first time Albi had used the emergency X. Other kids at the home had used it and had tried to reassure Albi it was okay to do the same, especially when Albi had been returned to the home in a shitload of trouble by the police after being caught shoplifting in the Eaton Centre.

Nik pulled a T-shirt over his head while simultaneously shoving his feet into his sneakers. He grabbed an elastic and tied his long black hair back, then added a baseball hat and shades as he walked to the door and pulled on his jacket. He patted his pockets. Keys, wallet, phone. He set the alarm, locked up the house, and jogged down the steps to his car.

He might not have a family of his own, but he’d always be able to help these kids.

And as the engine of his all-black Jaguar F-Type roared to life, he knew it had to be enough.

* * *

The fuel light flashed on Jenny McKade’s decade-old car just as she pulled off the highway.

Thank God.

The last thing she had time for was an emergency breakdown on the 401, a highway she hated more than life itself. Nothing good had ever come from being on Highway 401. She remembered the day her father had bundled them into the back of the car when she was seven, the trunk filled with what he’d called their post-apocalyptic survival kit. Jenny remembered not being allowed to bring her doll, Kayla, or her favorite Dr. Seuss books because they’d needed the space for “supplies.” As they’d driven north from their simple home in the Beaches, Jenny’s hopes of ever being reunited with her precious toys and things decreased with every mile they crawled up the Don Valley Parkway. But it wasn’t until they’d hit the 401 that her father had begun to ramble even more than usual. Something about doing it all wrong at that siege in Waco, a comment she hadn’t understood until she was much older after asking Pauline, the lady who ran the care home in which she’d been placed, what her father had meant. All she knew back then was that her father had gotten them to chant the words “We will overcome” until they had seen signs for the Toronto Zoo. For a moment, she’d thought it had all been a ruse, convincing herself that they weren’t leaving her friends and her school and her dolls behind and instead were going to the zoo as a surprise for her birthday, which was just six days away.

But they’d driven past the zoo and kept going until they’d reached a neglected farmhouse on a large lot. When they’d stepped out of their car, people outside the farmhouse had greeted her father like a conquering hero, calling him the prophet and shouting about how the Earth would be returned to the blessed. “The comet will save us all,” they’d chanted, which even to her young ears had sounded delusional.

Jenny returned her focus to the road. Technically it was her day off, but everything she’d done so far today was work related. Not that she minded. She’d always figured you were winning at life if you could do a job you loved and that society valued enough to pay you for doing it. Attending the networking breakfast for group-home leaders, during which several speakers had talked about professional development commitments, had been a no-brainer. Given its proximity to the Superstore on Weston Road, which thankfully had a gas station close by, she could tick a few more things off her list—gas, groceries for the group home, and some supplies for herself.

Running a group home had been her only objective when she’d finally graduated from high school, and now it was a reality. It had been heartbreaking to leave the group home for which she’d been the assistant manager in Ottawa, where she’d lived for the last eight years, but as much as Ottawa had been good to her, it had never quite felt like home the way Toronto had. She’d missed it so much that when the home had been forced to make cuts, she’d volunteered, partly to save her coworkers from losing their jobs, but also so that she could relocate with a little severance money in her pocket. When she’d moved back four weeks ago, she hadn’t had a job waiting for her, so she’d been thrilled when one of her former coworkers told her that a group home with a very special place in Jenny’s heart was looking for somebody temporarily. She’d jumped at the chance to act as a substitute for Ellen, the current head of the home. Jenny knew her well from her own past and had been crushed to see the always-active Ellen with her leg in a cast. Ellen had brushed aside Jenny’s concern, joking that she’d always thought an angry parent would be her demise rather than the misplaced laundry basket she’d tripped over. With her broken leg, she would need considerable recovery time after her surgeries, leaving the city no choice but to find a stand-in for her.

This would be Jenny’s chance to prove that she could run a home. Do it right, impress her bosses, and the city might even find her a house manager role in another home when her temporary contract ended.

She turned into the grocery store’s underground parking lot and pulled into an empty space. She killed the engine and looked over at her the mail sitting on the passenger seat that she’d collected on her way out of the apartment that morning. She recognized her father’s handwriting on the envelope at the top of the stack.

Better get it over with.

Before indecision could take over again, she ripped open the envelope her lawyer had forwarded, an envelope that been sent to his office from the secure unit in which her father was currently imprisoned.

Dear Starburst,

God, she hated that name. She hated any reference at all to the night sky. The cult had based all their actions on the patterns of stars. Their collective suicide attempt had even been focused around the appearance of a new comet.

I used to think that the time it takes the Earth to orbit around the Sun was an impossible concept for a human to grasp. The precision of it—the extra six hours, forty-five minutes, and forty-eight seconds that everyone forgets to add when they say 365 days—seemed so abstract. But after having witnessed this phenomenon nearly seventeen times since I last saw you, I now think of each rotation only as a painful reminder of the time and distance between us.

While I myself have been very aware of it for some time, it has been decided by the court that I am now well enough to serve the rest of my sentence with the general prison population. I am aware, too, that an apology to you is long overdue, one I would like to make in person.

Even the courts and judges of Ontario now realize I am not the man I once was, and I desperately need the opportunity to convince you of this, too.

If I could make the trip to see you, I would do it in a heartbeat. But as I can’t, please would you reconsider your decision and please, please, come and see me?

Dad

Jenny balled up the paper and threw it into the footwell of the car. Damn him. He had no right. Not when he’d been the one to mix the poison with the apple juice to make it more palatable to the children of the compound, leaving six of them dead. Not when he’d been the one to give the commencement speech before all his followers were to die, explaining how the comet would save them all and that death was the only way to shed their physical skins and enter the next world. Not when he’d told them that God would know who failed him if they didn’t drink the poison in the order her father told them to. Not when he’d made her mom go first to show their joint commitment to their cause. Goddamn him.

Jenny shivered and stepped out of her car. A crisp coolness danced in the early November air, so she quickly fastened the buttons of her light jacket. It was her favorite time of year and she refused to let it be ruined by a stupid letter from her father. Growing up in care, this season had somehow felt tainted. Thanksgiving had felt forced, Halloween had been a logistical disaster masked by cheap costumes, and Christmas—though it had been the best effort the home could provide—rarely had been touched by the magic she’d imagined existed in a real home.

Now, she embraced them all.

As she hurried into the store and did her shopping, searching for deals to stretch the food budget as far as it could go, she thought about the boys and teenagers currently living at Ellen’s. Albi, at twelve, was the youngest of the bunch, and from Ellen’s comments he sounded like the most at risk. Seventeen-year-old Leon, the oldest, shouldered the most baggage and anger. Quiet Mark was still coming to terms with the deaths of seven members of his family in a car accident. Ravi was excited to be in the home because it was a respite from the brutal beatings he’d received at the hand of his father. Two other boys had been reunited with their now-clean mom the previous weekend, and she expected their places to be filled any day now.

Ketchup was on sale, so Jenny pulled four bottles off the shelf. When kids were around, you could never have too much ketchup.

She continued to run through the boys, their backgrounds, their social workers’ files, constantly reworking and rethinking her plans for activities that would help them individually while forcing them to work together. And yet, at the same time, she needed to be realistic about their differences and limitations. It would be wrong, for instance, to assume someone happy and good like Ravi could somehow “save” Albi—or to make it his responsibility to do so.

Her thoughts consumed her as she filled her cart. Juice on sale three for the price of two, bags of milk, loaf after loaf of bread. When she had everything she needed, she hurried to the check-out lane.

She tapped her fingers on the handle of the shopping cart as she hummed the new Adele song that had been playing on the radio earlier. The lady two places ahead of her in line waved her flier around, pointing to items she was certain hadn’t checked out at the right price. Jenny couldn’t complain—she’d be doing the exact same thing when it was her turn. Plus, she’d be using the fistful of coupons she’d collected. Every penny she could save on groceries could be put to better use to provide for the boys in her care.

On her first visit to meet with Ellen, who had hobbled around on crutches as best she could while bringing Jenny up to speed, everything about the house and yard had bombarded her with memories. The tire swing that Nik had hung in the back garden. The initials of all the boys written into the driveway concrete that had been poured on a steamy August day while Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” had blasted from a truck radio. The front porch where Nik had first kissed her, buoyed by the arrival of a secondhand electric guitar and amp from his social worker, Maisey.

Nik’s group home had been everything hers hadn’t been. While Nik had Ellen and Maisey, who cared deeply about creating waves of boys who thought of each other as brothers, her home had been nothing more than a place to sleep at night. When she’d finally escaped the clutches of the cult where she’d been isolated because of who her father was, she’d imagined she’d be sent somewhere warm, and loving. To a family who loved children. To somewhere she’d feel connected to those around her. She’d dreamed about it. Sat in the bunk room she shared with other young girls and day-dreamed about it. But the reality had been so different. In her group home, there was no Ellen, and her concerns and fear had been dealt with clinically and professionally, rather than caringly and compassionately.

She glanced at the magazines on the rack in front of her and sighed, wishing that she hadn’t. The cover of one at eye level proudly proclaimed something she already knew: Nikan Monture was great in bed. Jenny sighed loudly and stepped forward as the line moved. For eight years, she’d managed to keep thoughts of him at bay, but in the less than a month she’d been back in the city, he seemed to be everywhere.

“Nik Strummed Me All Night Long”

Jenny blanched at the headline. What had once been special between the two of them as they’d fumbled around their first time had become something he would share with anyone—while the whole world watched. Her heart felt just as wrecked as it had the day she’d found out that Nik had cheated on her.

She’d heard from Ellen that the band still supported the home, but she hoped she wouldn’t have to face Nik during her brief assignment. That would be too damn hard.

The belt began to empty as the cashier rang out the items for the lady ahead of her, and Jenny turned away from the rack. As she loaded up the belt with the bulk paper towels, multipacks of chicken thighs, and other items, she tried to bury the burning she felt in her chest. Even though she wasn’t in any of Nik’s videos, their relationship having predated the worst of cellphone sexting and voyeurism, she felt the pain of the women who had been violated by the leak. She knew Nikan well enough, or at least she had once, to assume that the videos had been recorded consensually, but did there have to be so damn many of them?

During her time in Ottawa, she hadn’t been celibate. She’d dated and had even had year-long periods where she had been in relationships, but between her own hang-ups and the fact that she seemed to be a magnet for men who couldn’t keep it in their pants, they had all failed. Plus, deep in her heart, she knew it was because they weren’t Nik—and they never could be. She could either spend her life alone or settle for second best—and second best sucked.

Once everything was on the belt, she hurried to the other side of the checkout to load it all into the reusable bags in her shopping cart. She put all the cold stuff together and shoved the paper towel onto the shelf below.

“That’ll be two hundred and eight dollars and sixty-eight cents,” the cashier said.

Jenny handed her the coupons. “I have these,” she said. Her own experience of care meant that she had always been the uncool kid at school. While others had been kicking around in high-end sneakers, she’d worn a pair of second-hand Converse she’d picked up at Goodwill instead of the unbranded white sneakers she’d been given.

The cashier huffed. They always did. And she’d probably huff again when Jenny went through her receipt line by line to check that all the flyer discounts had gone through.

Jenny shook her head and glanced down at her phone. A little after noon. Even though it was her day off, her weekly meeting with Albi’s social worker had been rescheduled for one o’clock because of a last-minute emergency the previous day, and it would take her half an hour to drive to the group home.

Damn.

How had the day gotten away from her?

* * *

Nik drove slowly in front of the Rogers Centre, eyes peeled for Albi, grateful that he’d caught the reporters outside the house off guard with his rubber-burning exit from his driveway.

Traffic was always busy, so he’d slapped on his hazards and crawled along the curb. A horn sounded behind him, and Nik spared a glance into his rearview. The guy driving the van behind him was gesticulating for him to get out of the way. Nik flipped him the bird and continued to look for Albi’s black curls.

“Dial Albi,” Nik said, and the car did the work. The ringing vibrated through the car.

“Nik,” Albi whispered.

“Where are you? I’m in front of the stadium.”

There was a pause, some shouting, and a mumbled “I ain’t fucking scared.” “I’m up the steps past gate six.”

What the hell would Albi be scared of? Nik slammed on his brakes and pulled to a stop, ignoring all the signs clearly telling him parking wasn’t allowed. “I’m coming to get you.” Leaving his warning lights flashing, he got out of the car and jogged across the concourse and up the first set of steps. Sure, a diligent traffic warden might come ticket his car, but hopefully he’d be back before it was towed. Either way, he had no choice but to leave it there.

Albi needed his help.

He remembered what it felt like, to be young and stupid. Trying to fit in, to be cool. He’d not been a saint in his teens. And hell, he’d derailed himself for most of his early twenties. Until he’d realized that, just like him, his brothers, his band, had needed stability. And he’d assumed the mantle.

He shook his head as loud voices caught his attention, but he couldn’t see where they were coming from.

“Do it, motherfucker,” said one.

“Bitch, do it.”

“I’m gonna do it,” he heard Albi shout.

From his spot at the bottom of the second set of steps, he saw an elderly lady approaching the top. She looked repeatedly over her shoulder and moved unsteadily toward the first step. Fear was etched into the lines of her features, and she gripped the strap of her purse with her hand. His heart moved to his mouth as he saw Albi looming behind her. A group of boys older than Albi but still clearly in their early to mid-teens fanned out behind him, one of them pantomiming a pushing gesture while three more pointed phones straight at the woman, ready to film what happened next.

“Just get on with it, prospect,” shouted a guy who looked at least twenty.

Prospect. Like a wannabe member of a biker gang? Who the fuck talked that way to a group of school-age kids? Shit. With a burst of adrenaline, he pounded up the stairs. What did they want Albi to do? Steal her purse? Push her down the steps?

“Yo, Albi, we gotta go,” he shouted, his calm tone belying his sheer terror. He ran straight up toward the woman, fearing for her safety if the gang followed through on whatever it was Albi didn’t do. He wasn’t sure he could prevent her from being hurt, but he could break her fall.

The older lady moved over to the left and gripped the handrail, and Nik felt shitty that she was so obviously terrified.

The boys around Albi took a step back. One of them ran away.

“Albi, we gotta go,” the ringleader said in a singsong voice that gave Nik the urge to punch him the vocal chords to shut him up. It was too late to pretend they were just hanging out doing nothing.

Instead, he reached the top of the stairs and squared up against the guy. “You got a problem?” he asked.

Once they stood toe to toe, it became clear to the guy that Nik had him pegged when it came to size. Nik’s six-foot-two frame had always had its advantages, and the martial arts Ellen had made him take up as a kid to help him deal with what had happened to him had become a passion he practiced regularly. The fact that there were five guys made no difference; if any one of them made a move to hurt the old lady or Albi, he’d take the motherfuckers down, minors or not.

“Get out of my face.” The punk’s words might have been full of attitude, but the dilated pupils and beads of sweat on his forehead showed Nik that he was talking to a shit-scared young adult. Having been one once himself, he felt a small wave of empathy.

“Holy shit,” one of the other kids said. “Are you Nik from Preload?”

Nik ignored him.

“Look, kid,” he said, his voice softer than before. “This is a really bad fucking choice. There’s no coming back from this kind of shit. Encouraging minors to pull stunts like this, you go to prison for that kind of thing.”

“You know nothing,” the kid scoffed.

“I know a lot more than you. I know that you stupidly picked a spot to pull this shit that’s in the full glare of the stadium security cameras. Evidence,” he said, pointing up to the exterior of the building. “I know that tat on your neck tells me which gang you belong to and which neighborhood in Toronto you live in. And I know that the pass sticking out of your pocket says you ride transit a lot and that you had to enter your address to get it. I’m going to follow up on all of it, kid. I’ll know who you are by the end of the day. You want me to forget about you after I do that, you stay the fuck away from Albi. You don’t, and I’ll be all over you like a rash.”

“Come on,” the guy finally said to the younger ones around him, but none of them moved. “What are you waiting for? I said let’s go.”

Nik pulled out his wallet. “Fifty bucks each and fare for a cab ride back to school if you stay.”

None of them moved.

“You’re going to pay for this,” the guy said before turning on his heels and running away.

There was a collective sigh of relief, and Nik turned to look at the rest of them—really just kids. Ones making dumb choices. Choices he would have made once. “Seriously?” he asked. “This is how you want to spend your day? Skipping school? Doing stupid shit that will mess up the rest of your lives?” He looked at each of them individually, making sure he made eye contact. Some of them struggled to hold his gaze. “I was you once, and a woman I lived with made me listen to her. Seriously, don’t go down this path. It leads nowhere good.”

The kids stared at him, all completely silent. Nik shook his head. Now he had a merry little band of kids that he needed to get where they needed to be, including Albi, who wore a frown. And he needed to check that the old lady was okay. But when he looked down both flights of stairs, she’d already disappeared. Smart move. “Let’s go. Albi. You’re coming with me.”

Once he had them all into cabs and had given them their money, he led Albi to the car. Thoughts swirled in his head. Had Albi really been about to do whatever it was they were encouraging him to? Would he have gone through with it if Nik hadn’t appeared?

“Get in,” Nik said as he unlocked the doors.

“Aren’t you going to yell at me? Ask me what I was doing there?” Albi asked moodily as he stepped inside and began to fasten his seatbelt.

Nik shook his head and steered the car toward Lake Shore. “No. That’s the point of the X.”

“What do you mean?”

He wasn’t going to bore Albi with all the details. How a prison-based therapist had found one thing to be true among career criminals—that they’d ended up taking part in something from which they didn’t think they had a way out and then couldn’t get out of that way of life because everything compounded. Steal a bottle of liquor from the store as a dare, and before you know it, it was being held against you to make you stand watch during a robbery. Stand watch during a robbery, and your next step is a robbery of your own. Ignore your partner beating the homeowner in a robbery the first time, and you end up doing the beating the second. All because nobody was there to help you get out of stealing the liquor in the first place.

“You realized you weren’t supposed to be doing whatever it was that kid was trying to get you to do, but didn’t think you could get yourself out of it safely. You messaged an adult to get you out of it. You deserve a little credit for that, Albi. So I’m not going to lecture you.”

Albi looked out of the window and was silent for a while. “Thanks, Nik,” he said gruffly.

“You’re welcome. Let’s get you back to the home.” He made the call to let the home deal with it instead of taking him straight back to school. Nik had no clue of the kid’s circumstances and before he threw Albi under the school principal bus, he’d see if Ellen’s replacement wanted to handle it differently.

Nik turned on the radio and let classic Rage Against the Machine flow. He knew exactly what was going through Albi’s mind because he’d found himself in Albi’s shoes a million times before he’d landed on Ellen’s doorstep. There had been the time he’d tried to break into the liquor store with Elliott when they were fifteen. Stupid acting out, trying to look cool in front of his friends. But there was also the time when he’d been unable to control his emotions. When they’d poured out of him as he’d trashed his classroom in rage after Adam had killed himself, disappointed in himself for not having done enough or talked to Adam enough to understand just how broken he had been. Angry that he hadn’t managed to save him, like he hadn’t been able to save his mom.

The reason behind the behavior was way more important than the behavior itself, and Nik knew he’d have to spend more time with Albi to get him to trust Nik with that.

When the home came into view, Nik slowed and pulled up to the curb. “You ready to go inside and face the music?”

“Whatever.” Albi shrugged. “Lecture, punishment, my social worker giving me shit.”

“Want me to come in with you?” Nik asked, pretending it hadn’t been his plan all along. Immediately after he got out, he was going to phone Ellen and let her know what had happened to Albi.

“You’d do that?” Albi asked.

“Sure thing, kid.”

As they got out of the car and walked up the drive, Albi asked, “Do you know when Ellen is going to be back?”

Nik shook his head. “Hard to say. A month, maybe two. Why?”

“I don’t know how the new lady is going to take this.”

As shitty as it was for Ellen to have broken her leg, it was worse for the kids under her care, who’d already dealt with so much disruption in their lives.

“I’ll talk to her. I’m sure I can smooth it over. What’s her name?”

“Albi?” A female voice came from the garden, and Nik looked over.

Jenny.

She stood with the late fall sun behind her, her hair shining like a golden halo and falling in long golden-ombre waves past her shoulders. She dropped the two large packs of paper towels she was carrying. They bounced before landing on the grass.

He couldn’t speak. He should have words. He’d thought a million times about what he would say to her if he ever saw her again. But he couldn’t remember a damn word of the speech he’d practiced just about every day in the shower.

Silence stretched between them as he took in the soft curve of her neck, the way her eyes seemed even wider, and how the jacket she wore hugged her curves in a way that told him she’d lost the ten pounds she’d always thought she needed to but he hadn’t ever given a damn about.

“Nik?” she gasped, putting her hand over her heart like she used to when he’d snuck up on her and made her jump by tickling her sides. Visions of her in a white cotton tank and panties, lying on his bed, giggling and begging him to stop while he did just that, filled his head. He thought about how he’d kiss her until she opened those sweet legs of hers and allowed him to touch her most intimate places.

Jenny gathered herself quickly, dropped her hands, stood taller, rolled her shoulders back, and lost the look of surprise.

She turned away from him then, just like he had done to her all those years ago. “Albi,” she said, “why aren’t you in school?”

Without thinking, without even really processing what she was saying, Nik took one step after another until he stood right in front of her—until she looked right up at him, not with the look of love she’d always used to, but with a scowl. Leaning forward, he wrapped his arms around her shoulders and hugged her tightly, his body immediately remembering the way they’d used to come together in the creaky bed in the damp apartment over that Greek restaurant on the Danforth.

“God, Jenny. I missed you,” he murmured. “I looked for you everywhere. I—”

“Nikan,” she said, and shoved at his chest. “No. Don’t do this. I’m at work.” She glanced over to where Albi stood, looking bemused.

Nikan placed his hands on her biceps, more to prove to himself that she was here than anything else. That he hadn’t suddenly imagined her appearance. That she was as real and as solid as the home that stood behind her.

“Please let go of me,” she said as she tried to shrug out of his grip.

God. Why couldn’t he find words? Why wasn’t he ready for this? The house he’d bought, the timing of it, it all suddenly seemed fated. She was back and he had a home, one he’d already imagined—dreamed of, really—her sharing with him.

But he let go and stepped back because she was right.

First they needed to deal with Albi, and then he was going to take however long was necessary to persuade her that she belonged in his life.