“I HAD TO FIRE MY COUSIN today because he’s going places,” my friend Tony said, squinting at the road ahead. “Not to college, but other would-you-like-fries-with-that places.”

“Sucks.” I swallowed my sigh along with a fiery dose of tequila and rolled my gaze out the open passenger window. On any other day, I would be more sympathetic, but today had turned into an avalanche of shit. And I wasn’t even counting Hill and his sudden obsession with my fingers.

My mind, the prickly bastard that it was, kept flashing to my brother’s hands creeping down Paige’s back to just above her ass when they’d hugged. It probably had felt innocent enough to her, but she hadn’t seen the look in his eyes—a hunger that promised he would use her, then cast her off harshly for therapy bait like the dozens of others.

But to do that to Paige? I guess I should’ve known Riley could stoop so low. I hoped she was smart enough to see it coming if he tried.

Still, I couldn’t shake that image of them, what they could be doing right now, if for whatever reason Paige didn’t see that he was looking at her like a sexual object. But Paige was so much more than that. Funny, since I was the guy who had wanted to strip her naked in a public library when she didn’t even know who I was. This wasn’t a case of like brother, like brother, though.

Tony narrowed his eyes through an exhale of cigarette smoke. “Dude, relax. Zen it out.”

Easier said than done. I didn’t have time anyway. We were almost at the house where Hill had so politely requested my presence.

“Turn right,” I said, pointing. “We’re looking for a yellow house.”

Tony turned, squinting at the road ahead. Judging from the leap his cigarette made from relaxed to jutting straight out, I could tell he was about as thrilled as I was to be in this neighborhood after dark.

“You sure about this?” he asked.

“No.”

“That makes me feel so much better,” Tony said.

He would go with me, of course, since he knew all about the debt to Hill that wasn’t mine, my family’s extracurricular activities, why my right hand looked mummified in gauze. That was why I’d asked him because I sure as hell wasn’t going alone. He’d had my back since eighth grade during a particularly risky Dungeons & Dragons mission. Those were the good old days. The good, geeky, I-didn’t-have-a-criminal-record-yet days.

A loud bass beat drowned out the classic rock station in Tony’s Buick and announced where a party was long before we saw it. Some girl stood in the doorway of a house—not a yellow one—shrieking and giving the full moon her middle finger. A built Asian was shoving a big, black guy between two parked cars, out into the street. Dozens of people stood around on the lawn, cans and bottles in their hands winking in the glow of Tony’s headlights in a sort of strobe-like warning that might as well have read #sorrynotsorry.

My stomach curled at that particular hashtag, made the backs of my eyes burn, my pulse pound, so I attempted to scorch that memory from my mind with another tilt of the tequila bottle. There. Not gone, but thoroughly melted and dulled into something rubbery I could wedge into place at the back of my mind.

“Not that house,” I said.

“Good because it looks like they started without us.”

I hated parties like those, so out of control and unpredictable, and I was about to contribute to it, to break these people even more than some of them probably already were. Unless they got their drugs from someone other than Slim at the yellow house. Which was two houses down from the party and the shrieking chick.

While Tony pulled in next to the curb farther down the street, I took another blast of liquid courage and elbowed the package hidden inside my leather jacket. All I had to do was get in, toss Slim his drugs, get out. Alive. That would be really great.

Except I had no idea who Slim was. This should be fun.

We strode toward the house with purpose, the bass beat thumping a new, louder rhythm for my heart from the party down the street. Get in. Get out. The guilt I felt for ruining lives could eat me alive, slowly, afterward.

“This won’t take long,” I said more for myself than Tony.

“Better not. Golden Girls starts at eleven.”

I glanced at him, not quite sure if he was fucking with me or not. The guy was a walking contradiction. He must’ve started lifting weights before I met him six years ago because dude had always been built like a truck. Yet he wore a light blue T-shirt with two orange kittens licking at bowls of milk plastered on each of his pecs. No one ever gave him shit about that shirt, either, or any of his cat shirts. One look at the size of his fists shut their mouths for good.

“Really? Golden Girls?” But he didn’t answer because the door to the yellow house opened.

A massive Latino guy stood there with some lady practically wrapped around the side of his hip. She giggled and hiccupped at the ceiling.

I’d seen that same glassy-eyed, lost expression in my baby sister while she tripped up the stairs at four in the morning. It twisted me up just as much now as all those times. This girl was battling a demon I couldn’t see, but I knew it by name. H, brown sugar, hell dust on the streets, otherwise known as heroin. The same thing that was hidden inside my jacket. The same thing that had nearly killed Rose.

The big guy ushered us inside, then shoved the girl at me so he could frisk Tony.

“You can’t see me because I have clear corners,” the girl whispered to me.

I faced her toward a red couch in the corner of a living room with two bottle blondes sitting on it so she’d focus on something other than the war inside her. Her pale skin felt cold and slicked with sweat, yet somehow hot at the same time. I hated how it felt, how it was like a punch to the gut because it was such a rough reminder of dragging Rose back downstairs and shoving her into the bathroom before Mom and Dad woke up to see the damage already done. When their little girl was near death, they had no choice but to see. So they swept Rose up into a tidy corner known as drug rehabilitation to forget about her while they plotted ways to keep it all a secret. We couldn’t have a U.S. senator who was incapable of running his own family become the next president, now could we?

The frisker pushed the high girl away from me then ran his hands around my waist, down my jeans, inside my jacket. When his fingers met the package, the tequila sloshed in my stomach. But he didn’t do anything other than reattach the girl to his hip.

Around us, another quieter, less crowded, party raged. It was hotter inside the house than out. Sweat poured down my back, soaking my shirt, making me even more uncomfortable. I wished like hell I could take my jacket off, but I couldn’t risk anyone other than Slim seeing the package.

Get in. Get out. Alive.

“Where’s Slim?” I asked, but the dude ignored me by plunging his tongue down the girl’s throat.

Pretty sure Slim wasn’t in her mouth.

Tony and I cut through the house, my gaze catching on a pair of grinding hips, perfect pink lips framed with flawless skin, and silky dark hair. Almost Paige, but not. The girl started toward me, her hips swaying, and all I could think about were what Paige and Riley might be doing right then.

Please, God, not fucking. Even if he did treat her right, I would lose my mind just hearing the sounds and seeing his smug expression every morning for the next six weeks. He knew how I felt about her, had always felt about her, which would explain the glee all over the stupid prick’s face when he caught me spying their full-body hug. But if they weren’t fucking, she would be living in my house for six whole weeks.

Six weeks she could spend with me. The possibilities were endless.

I needed to get the hell out of here.

“Sorry, sugar,” I said to almost-Paige. “I gotta go.”

See, that was my let-them-down-easy style, unlike Riley.

She stepped back and pouted, but within seconds had wrapped her arms around some other poor schmuck’s neck and was dry-humping him.

I scanned the room for anyone who might have a Slim nametag on. What would Slim look like? Skinny? Or fat in an obvious, ironic twist?

In the corner of the living room, a woman straddled a man who was projectile vomiting over the side of his recliner. I turned away quickly and spotted Tony next to a doorway nearby. He jerked his chin for me to follow. I gladly did, leaving the heat and growing stink behind me for a well-ventilated kitchen.

In case shit got weird, a side door opened out into a backyard where fewer people partied. Just what Tony and I always looked for at parties—an emergency exit. Ever since high school and our obsession that the zombie apocalypse was going to happen today, we’d been planning our survival down to the last detail. Old habits never died. Good thing, too, since all I cared about was getting out of here.

Tony leaned his back against a countertop. “Whose house is this?”

I shrugged. “Some guy named Slim.”

“Seriously?” He cut his gaze to me. “That’s a prison name.”

“You remember where we are, right? Half the people here have probably been in prison.” I leaned against the stove, chewing my lower lip, wishing like mad I’d brought the tequila in with me. I’d been to jail, but I still felt out of place here. Parties like this weren’t my scene. Selling drugs to repay my sister’s debt to Hill wasn’t my life goal. Shocking, I know.

“Slim’s housekeeper is going to fart a hammer when she sees this shit,” Tony said, eyeing the empty bottles all over the kitchen. “I would quit. Or ask for a raise. Maybe both.”

I closed my eyes at both Tony’s messed up logic and timing. I tell him we’re at a prison party, and he chose to talk about housekeeping? But it was Tony. Instead of judging me about why I had dragged him here in the first place, he was humoring me. Distracting me from everything. This was why he was more of a brother than Riley.

“Sexist,” I said. “How do you know the housekeeper’s a—?”

A loud crack from the backyard made us both jump. We glanced at each other with likely the same thoughts—gunshot or zombie apocalypse?—then, without a word, we sprang to either side of the back door.

A shadowy guy kneeled on a square of concrete surrounded by dying grass with a flickering lighter.

Crack.

We both jumped again, even though I knew to expect it. The sound ricocheted off a solid metal fence surrounding the yard to bounce into the open kitchen and magnify itself over the thudding bass music.

Crack. Pop.

“Fourth of July came early,” a voice behind us said with a thick Texas accent.

I turned to see a very overweight white guy flanked by two black men. The guy had about seventeen chins drooping down his blue and white checkered shirt, dark hair slicked to the side. Beady eyes that never focused on one thing for more than a second bounced around the room hummingbird-style. He and his bodyguards took up the length of the kitchen, effectively blocking the living room exit.

“Slim,” I guessed.

“I know you?” the big dude asked.

So his name was an obvious, ironic twist. No nametag needed. “I know Hill.”

“I know Hill, too, the seedy punk. He wants my territory.” His accent stretched the words into several extra syllables. “Show me this peace offering of his that he mentioned.”

I fingered the broken snap inside the sleeve of my jacket and swallowed. This was the first time Hill had ever made me do a delivery. I was usually the money guy in the week I’d been trying to pay off Rose’s one million dollar debt to Hill. What if somehow he was playing with me by sending me here?

“Out back,” I demanded. I could hop a fence faster if I was next to one.

The two black guys shifted closer, pressing me in, faces blank.

Crack.

I was pretty sure no one jumped that time but me. A drop of sweat slid down the side of my neck.

Slim’s hummingbird stare narrowed in on me and stayed there. “Right here.”

I gave a short nod, trying to think of all the ways I could worm myself out of this if things went sour. In other words, be more like Dad. My short-lived political science major never did teach me the art of spinning lies into semi-reasonable truths. I lifted a hand inside my jacket, which made the two guards jerk their fingers to their waistbands.

Pop. Crack.

The sound sucked the air from my lungs. It took several seconds before I realized neither of them had fired a gun. Several seconds I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, even though I wanted to rush outside and kill the fucker lighting fireworks.

“Slowly,” Slim warned.

One of the bodyguards lifted his shirt to reveal the butt of his gun and stroked it like a dick. I suddenly wanted to join the projectile vomit guy in the living room.

“Easy, Sam,” Tony muttered next to me.

I glanced at him and couldn’t remember a time when I’d seen him stand so still. I inched my other hand up and eased the plastic-wrapped package out of my jacket.

This had to be done. #sorrynotsorry

I flung the package at Slim with a shaky arm. One of the guards snagged it out of the air. His buddy handed him a knife, and he stabbed into it with the precision of a surgeon. With the tip of the blade, he lifted a small amount of the white powder to his nose, forehead lined in concentration. He sniffed but didn’t inhale. Once. Twice. The guy obviously knew his heroin.

“How pure is it?” Slim asked to no one in particular, his beady gaze rolling over the room.

I had no idea. Before I could answer, an uninterrupted series of cracks spiked the tension in my body to the highest level. Sweat leaked down my sides in rivers. I glanced at the back door, wanting to make a move to shut out the sound, but didn’t. Not in front of the guy who wanted to whip his gun out so he could molest it.

And behind the cracks and bass beat, a siren wailed. Far away but coming closer. The police on the way to bust up the party two houses down? Or this one?

Slim and his two bodyguards didn’t seem to notice all the noise, or were so used to it, they could ignore it.

Not me. Every explosion, every second the siren grew louder twisted my tense muscles into a frayed noose close to snapping.

Tony hadn’t moved since this whole shit storm began. I could practically hear his brain turning over every second to analyze it.

The guy with the blade of heroin darted his tongue out to taste it. When he slipped it back into his mouth, his eyes bugged out of his head and he lunged for the kitchen sink. He yanked the tap water on and spit, gagged, scrubbed at his tongue until one word fell out: “Strychnine.”

“Rat poison,” Slim growled.

Oh, shit, no.

The gun molester jerked it from his waistband and pointed it at my head.

I lifted both hands and froze. Questions lodged at the back of my throat, ready to hurl out, but they were all meant for Hill. He’d set me up. The bastard set me up. I was so dead.

The approaching siren sped on by. While staring down the barrel of the gun, I felt my chances for survival sink along with my stomach. The cops coming here could’ve been the distraction I needed to get out of here alive. To jail, but alive. Now, though, I was so fucking screwed.

Movement out of the corner of my eye, then crackcrackcrackcrackcrack. Fireworks exploded all over the middle of the kitchen floor. That time I welcomed the distraction, because for one second, Slim and his bodyguards’ eyes shifted away from me.

I didn’t think. Just moved.

I barreled into the guy with the gun and knocked it from his hand. Then, with a sharp turn into him, I smashed his nose with my elbow.

Slim, red-faced and breathing hard, rushed at the gun as fast as a three-hundred-pound man could.

Tony locked eyes with mine from inside the doorway and shouted something I couldn’t hear over the blasts. It probably had something to do with getting the fuck out of there.

I sprinted after him, the hairs on the back of my neck spiked with the threat of bullets coming after us.