“Come on, man,” Brooks says to me as I quickly trudge past him in the hallway. “Want to walk?”

He fishes a joint out of his pocket and I nod. I’m too jacked right now to even try to be near Sloan. I don’t want her to have to witness this part of me, the part of me that only my father knows how to wake up.

We head to the giant boulder on the side of the cliff that hangs over the ledge of the mountain. It’s a pitch-black night, the September sky so clear and cold you can see every cluster of stars that hangs overhead, along with your breath.

“He just threatened to fucking kill me, Brooks. He’s out of control.”

“I heard him. You know he’s full of shit, though.”

He lights up the joint and begins to puff, its cherry glowing in the darkness.

“Do you think there’s something wrong with Sloan?” I ask him.

“Other than the fact that she lets a guy like you stick it in her, I think she’s pretty alright.”

“You don’t think she’s shady?” I draw in a long hard lungful of pot, letting myself unravel a little bit.

“I have no idea, dude. I haven’t even talked to her. All I know is that you’re fucking nuts about her and I don’t want to see you get hurt. Having an old lady is a major commitment. Having an old lady who’s smarter, better looking, and earns more money than you is like chopping your balls off and handing them to her.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be with someone who makes you a better person?”

His laugh booms through the valley below.

“And what do you plan on making her?”

“I hadn’t thought about that. Happy I guess?”

He shrugs and takes a toke. “That’s more than most folks can say for themselves. So she’s gonna be your woman?”

“I’m working on it.”

“Probably don’t need to be barnstorming in there tonight and trying to make that happen.”

I look at my watch. 3 a.m. “Shit no. I gave Ollie my keys anyway so she could sleep one off.”

“You think that’s all they’re doing?” He grins deviously. “Maybe I should go check on them. Make sure they didn’t get any leg cramps from scissoring too hard.”

“Sometimes I wonder why you’re single. Then you open your fucking mouth.”

I feel the mattress sag next to me, waking me from my deep sleep. I sit bolt upright, realizing where I am. My heart flutters for a moment, knowing he’s back.

Instead, I’m greeted with a mop of blonde hair face down in the pillow. I’d never kick her out of the bed, but she’s not exactly what I was hoping for.

She’s wearing the leather minidress she had on earlier, and as uncomfortable as it looks, I can tell by the way she’s just sprawled there that she doesn’t even notice.

“Sorry,” Olive says. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.” She turns her head to look at me.

“It’s ok.” I muster up a smile. “What are you doing?”

“I drank a little too much. Gavin gave me his keys and said it was ok if I stayed here with you. I promise I’ll take us home first thing in the morning.”

“Where is he?”

“Oh honey,” she says, brushing my hair out of my face. “I have no idea, and I know better than to ask too many questions.”

My dumb ass asked zero questions. Maybe I’m better at this than I think. Maybe I’ve just been conditioned that way. If you don’t really want to know the answer, it’s better to just not ask.

“I’m starving.” I figure I’ll change the subject before she starts lecturing me again. Our last conversation left me feeling pretty terrible, and right now I just want to hang out and not feel alone. “Wanna raid the fridge?”

She rolls over on her back and laughs. “You’ve always had a one-track mind.”

I realize I’m wearing nothing but the comforter, but I don’t care. I wrap it around my body like a puffy black toga. I’ve known Olive since I was a kid. We’ve seen each other at our best and worst, and it wouldn’t be the first time one of us caught the other with their pants down.

I walk across the room to the little efficiency kitchen and pull open the door of the refrigerator. She follows close behind me.

“Of course,” I say, pouting. There’s a gallon of milk, a bunch of raw chicken breast, some broccoli, and a head of lettuce on the shelves.

“You think those abs are made of pizza?” she giggles.

“Wouldn’t that be something. Wait a minute.” I pull open the freezer and start rooting around, pulling out bags of frozen vegetables and unlabeled Tupperware containers. “Jackpot!”

I pull out a tub of chocolate ice cream and she fishes around in his drawers until she finds two spoons. She opens up a cupboard overhead and grabs a bag of tortilla chips.

We crawl back in bed and start devouring it. She flips on the TV to some trashy late-night talk show and we watch in fascination as some lady is united with the high school kids who catfished her and wiped out her retirement fund.

“Kinda reminds me of back in the day,” she says, but by the look on her face, I know she instantly regrets it. “I mean, like, the fun parts of back in the day.”

She’s right though. Throughout my entire relationship with Arthur, my favorite memories are of when he’d go out of town and she’d come stay at the house with me. It was like everything shitty about my life would disappear as soon as she walked through the door. We’d have slumber parties, drink wine, eat junk food until we were sick, and pass out on the couch like a couple of teenage girls.

I hated when those times would come to an end.

It meant that things would go back to dark. Evil. Always on edge.

“I know you feel like you need to protect me, Olive,” I tell her.

“I blame myself every day for not getting you out of that hellhole sooner. I had so many opportunities. I just thought if it was really that bad, you’d let me help you.”

“Don’t pin that shit on yourself. You tried so hard so many times. I was just tangled up too deep and I didn’t want him to come after you, too. You gotta let it go now, Ollie. Everything is different now.”

She lets out a long sigh.

“I know. There is literally not one single similarity between Gavin and Arthur that I can think of, other than the fact that they both are crazy about you. The more I get to know Gavin, the more that becomes obvious,” she says. “But this life, it’s not for girls like you.”

“I hate when you say stuff like that,” I scold. “Why do you think you’re so different than me? We came from the same trailer park, you know.”

“Yeah, but you had the drive to do something great with your life. I just wanted people to think I was pretty.”

“Well you are,” I assure her. “And if we’re comparing apples to oranges, I live in a shit apartment and drive a car that needed to be scrapped about five years ago. Everyone at work hates me and avoids me because I just don’t quite fit in with their expectations for me. You have a nice vehicle, a gorgeous home, and from the looks of it, a lot of people who love and care about you. What else do you really need?”

“Yeah, but when you finish your fellowship your whole life is going to change.”

“Is it really though? Maybe I will have money, but I’ll still be alone. I’ll still have nothing going for me but my career. Becoming a surgeon has helped me through a really dark time in my life, but it’s just another way to hide from my past by burying myself in my work.”

“You’re not alone,” she says, stroking my hair. “I’ve told you to move in with me a million times. You’ve helped me out of so many jams, it’s the least I can do.”

“It’ll be a lot easier for you to keep an eye on me if I’m under your roof, huh?” I laugh.

“Listen, maybe this is just the alcohol talking, but I don’t hate you and Gavin together. The more I think about it, the more it makes sense. I really put him through the ringer the past couple months and he hasn’t even so much as looked at another woman. Lord knows they’ve tried.”

“I don’t blame them one bit.”

“You like him, don’t you?”

“It’s funny. All this time I thought I just liked the idea of him. I thought I was just going to have some nasty one-night stand with a dirty biker and we both head our separate ways.”

“He’s not like that.”

“No, he’s…” I can only think of one word to describe the last twenty-four hours. “Intense.”

“That man really likes you, Sloan.”

“No. He likes the idea of me. He doesn’t even know me.”

“You haven’t told him anything, have you?”

“I didn’t think I was going to need to. This wasn’t part of the plan.” I sigh into the empty tub of ice cream, scraping the edges with a tortilla chip.

“We don’t have the luxury of a plan here. That’s the difference between my world and your world. You have to be ready for anything. Any time.”

I think about the hail of bullets earlier today, how my first thought was how sad it was that I didn’t even tell Gavin goodbye, that our last moments together would’ve been on bad terms.

“Honestly, though, do you really think we could make this work? His dad seems to really hate me.”

“Old Moses hates everyone on the outside. The only reason he likes me is because I make them lots of money.” She shrugs. “You really do need to talk to Gavin about your shit though before there’s any sort of misunderstanding. Better he hears the real story from you before he gets a backwards version of it from someone else. You see how these people interact with the law.”

I laugh. “Or you, speed racer. What the hell are you gonna do when you have to go back into town? The cops have your license plate number, I’m sure.”

“That’s what I bought these for,” she says, grabbing her boobs.

“You’re shameless, Ollie.”

I don’t know why, but I feel closer to this girl than I have in a long time. We don’t get to spend as much time together as we used to anymore, and something about being able to goof around with her makes me feel almost normal, a feeling that’s damn near impossible for me to wrap my brain around.

“I love seeing you happy,” she says. “It’s been so long.”

“How can you tell I’m happy?” I ask her.

She rolls over and wraps her arms around me and begins snoring softly right in my ear. Not exactly the cuddle buddy I wanted, but she’ll suffice. I’m grinning from ear to ear. She’s right. I’m happy.