I pried the keys out of her trembling hands. Shocked, she looked up at me. Anguish swam in the deep wells of blue that were normally so bright.

I opened the passenger door. “Get in.”

“I can drive.”

I grabbed her hand, pressed it flat across my chest where it vibrated and quaked. “No way, Alexis. You actually think I’m going to let you get behind the wheel when you’re in this state?”

Problem was, I’d put down bets she’d done it a hundred times before. All that time, this girl hadn’t had someone to stand by her side.

Her gaze swept over me as she edged forward, and she nodded slow as she folded herself in the passenger seat. I leaned in, buckling her seatbelt as this insane sense of protectiveness swelled.

A storm building in the distance. Ready to consume.

Every inch of me tightened, my jaw clenching as I started to lean back out and instead got tripped up on her gorgeous, trusting face.

I cupped her cheek. “You really think I’m gonna let you go out there alone?”

Her head shook. “No.”

“I just…I’m not normally like this when she calls. So shook up. I…” She trailed off, her gaze dropping to her lap.

“You what?”

Her eyes fluttered back up. “After that night—”

She swallowed, her confession raw. “It changed me, Zee. He made me fear things I’d never stopped long enough to fear before. I hate feeling this way.”

Anger bristled and burned and twisted my guts. I wanted to hunt the fucker down. Take him out. Wipe his stain from the earth.

I hated for even a second he’d held power over her belief and faith.

I framed her sweet face in my hands, my mouth an inch from hers, our stares locked. “No fear. Just life.”

A single tear slid from the corner of her eye. “You’re the one who gave it back to me. Ensured I didn’t lose it at the risk of your own. Words don’t contain the power to describe what that means to me. How it affected me.”

She grappled for my hand and set it over the thunder of her heart. “How you marked me right here.”

My spirit thrashed the lyrics of her song. One that was hard and confused and so utterly soft. Where the words held too much power and said all the things I’d never be allowed to say.

“I know, Lex. I know. That night changed me, too.”

And there was no chance in hell I’d ever let something like that happen again. Not to her.

Not ever.

I rounded the back of her car and hopped in the driver’s seat, turned over the ignition, and took to the street. Darkness blew passed the windows like the rush of a nightmare as we headed in the direction of what had gone down that night.

Memories of my brother inundated my mind, slamming me with a violence strong enough to cut me in two. Part of me had hated him for what he’d put me through. For the worry and the sleepless nights and the betrayals that I’d taken like a personal insult.

Funny how, in the end, my treacheries had been so much greater than his.

There’d been no time for apologies. No time for explanations. No time to tell him I’d take it all back.

Because all his time was gone. Just like time was fleeting for me and Alexis.

I fought against the onslaught of it all, knuckles white where I death-gripped the wheel, teeth grinding so hard I was sure they’d be nothing but powder.

A soft hand touched my forearm. “Don’t blame her.”

How could Alexis know? Could she feel that I wanted to shake her? Scream at her that it was no fucking use and tell her never to give up in the same breath?

Did she know?

Every nerve in my body was on edge when I jerked her car into a parking lot in front of a shitty 24-hour convenience store. It sat like some kind of twisted portal into a pit filled with nothing but the vile.

God knew I’d been down there too many times.

That possessiveness and protectiveness lapped into a flame as I thought of how many times this girl had traipsed down to this side of town in the middle of the night.

She clicked open her door. My hand shot to her arm. “Don’t move.”

I got out and went to her side. My attention was sharp, darting around the area, calculating every face and every intention.

It finally landed on the worn-down girl huddled against the wall of a building across the street, her silhouette just outside the reach of the streetlamp.

She stepped from the shadows, and I tried to rein in the anger I felt that Alexis had to deal with this bullshit, too.

When Alexis saw her sister, she unlatched her door, and I held it open while she stumbled out.

Avril crossed the street with her hands stuffed in her pockets. “You came.”

Grief shivered through Alexis. Palpable and ripe. “One day I won’t. But the fact that I’m here means I haven’t given up on you.”

Avril’s chin quivered. “I don’t know what will happen to me that day. When you give up on me. Stop loving me.”

Emotion charged between them.

God. This was brutal.

Alexis fisted her hand over her chest. “You know I won’t ever stop loving you. But I don’t know how much longer I can keep doing this. Every time I see you, you take a little piece of me with you. I can’t keep going until there’s nothing left. I can’t keep putting myself in danger just because that’s where you are.”

Avril shrank into herself, voice small. “You know I don’t want to be this person.”

Alexis took a pleading step toward her. “Then don’t be. Come with us. Right now. We’ll get you out of here, and you don’t ever have to come back.”

Jerking like she was struck with a sudden bolt of fear, Avril peered over her shoulder, into the shadows she’d stepped from before she turned back to Alexis.

Nervously, she whispered even lower than she had before. “You know it’s not as simple as that. He’ll find me.”

Rage punched me in the gut.

It was that moment when I finally realized what Avril was saying. How abhorrently tied she was to this piece of shit.

Dread sank to the pit of my stomach.

Is that why that scumbag had Alexis pinned against that grimy wall in the first place? Thinking he might be able to draw her into that life. Or was he simply willing to guard his possessions, at any cost, thinking his best bet was getting Alexis out of his way?

I gripped two handfuls of hair, trying to keep it in check when I turned to look over my shoulder. Searching and seeking.

A breeze rustled through. A beer can clattered as it rolled along the deserted lot across the street, the only sound breaking up the thick haze of silence.

I looked back to see Alexis grip Avril by the forearm. “He doesn’t own you.”

Sadness spun across Avril’s features. “That’s where you’re wrong.”

Avril swallowed hard and held out her hand, palm up.

Sorrow filtered out with Alexis’s resigned sigh before she turned and sifted through her bag and came back out with a wad of cash. She set it in Avril’s hand but didn’t let go.

Motherfuck.

This was too much.

“I love you,” Alexis finally said before she released her hold and Avril took a step back.

“I know. I love you, too.”

Avril took two more steps backward, eyes locked on the girl who sank deeper and deeper into my spirit with every selfless piece she revealed.

This gorgeous girl who allowed herself to be used up just like her sister, though in an entirely different way.

I couldn’t stomach it. Not for a second longer. I took a step toward Avril, my voice low and urgent. “Come with us. I’ll take care of you. Protect you. I won’t let that bastard touch you. Not ever again.”

Avril finally looked up at me, like she just realized I was there. I was just another inconsequential face in the many that passed her by in her quest to survive. She laughed. Cold and hollow. “That’s not how it works.”

She turned away, quickly looked both ways, and darted across the street.

We watched her in silence until she disappeared. The second she did, I rushed for Alexis, held her up when she slumped in my hold. She clung to my shirt, tears seeping into the fabric. “It hurts, Zee. It hurts so bad.”

I ran my hand down the back of her head. “I know, baby, I know.”

My attention moved around the lot, back to the store. There was a tweaked-out guy hanging out against the hood of his car, watching us with too much interest. “Come on, let’s get you out of here. You don’t belong down here.”

“Neither does she.”

“No,” I agreed. But right then, it didn’t seem to be anything Avril was willing to change.

Alexis let me help her back into the car, and I quickly shut her door and rounded to my side. I hopped in and turned over the ignition.

Putting it in gear, I flipped the car around. Our headlights sprayed out ahead of us, tossing light on the shadows where Avril had disappeared.

A damned spotlight that sent a scatter of rats running from the sewer.

Two men took off one direction, while three women cowered against the wall.

Avril was in the middle of them.

Rage burned hot when my sight landed on the bastard standing off to the side of them, eyes lit up like a demon in the flash that cut through the night. My muscles ticked and jerked, ready for a fight, my foot itching to slam on the gas.

He was right fucking there.

Alexis set her hand on my forearm, fear clogging her voice. “Don’t. He’s not worth it.”

I squeezed the steering wheel tighter, trying to contain the violence spinning the axis of my world. The instinct to protect.

The asshole lifted his chin and an arrogant smirk took hold of his mouth.

Sickness clawed at my senses.

Because the bastard knew. He knew Alexis. He knew her car. He knew she’d come.

And without a doubt, he knew it wouldn’t be the last time she came running back.

Nausea spun when I realized what it was he really wanted from her.

He wanted to bind her and tie her. Make her a pawn in his sick, twisted world. Use up her body while men slowly killed her spirit and mind.

That was how these assholes worked. They saw someone who was vulnerable and innocent and viewed them as an opportunity.

I tore my attention from the piece of shit across the street and turned it on Alexis.

She stared back at me, blue eyes wide and frantic, an overpowering collision of sea and sky. Her hair was a mess from my fingers, her cheeks pink and stained with her tears.

“He might not be, but you are.”