Lucy’s Bar was quiet on a Thursday evening.

The lights and the muted televisions and the bottles of booze lit up behind the bar like they were something special were all so familiar to me and at the same time totally different.

Completely new.

It was the adrenaline, I knew. I’d lived on the edge of fear long enough to know when my fight-or-flight instincts were fully engaged. But it had been a while. And the world was safe and dangerous all at once.

“Whoa,” Lucy said, looking up at me as I came in the door. “What happened to you?”

I’d forgotten about the bruises from the fight. I touched my eye where the swelling lingered and tongued the edge of my lip where it was still split. Kissing Beth like my life depended on it hadn’t helped a whole lot.

For a second I was swamped with the idea of my blood on her mouth. That even now she’d be tasting the copper of me on her tongue.

I shook off the feeling, narrowing my attention back to the shit at hand.

“Scrape,” I said. “I’m fine.”

“Yeah, well you don’t look it. Beer?”

“No thanks.”

Her eyebrows furrowed. “Where’s Pest? What’s...?” Her gaze fastened on to me, and she really took me in. “What’s going on?” she asked in a careful voice. “You seem different.”

I was different in a thousand incalculable ways.

“I’m not. I just… I need your help.”

“Okay? Shoot.”

She leaned over the bar, the Puerto Rican flags on her hands, the beautiful flowers up her arms. She was a work of art, and I hated the idea of pulling her into this in any way.

But I didn’t have a lot of options.

“That woman that was here the last time I came in.”

Lucy went very still. Her face. Her hair even. “What about her?”

“Where can I find her?”

“Nope.” She shook her head. Got real busy putting glasses in the racks above the far edge of the bar. “No way, Tommy.”

“I need to see her.” I stepped to the bar, leaning halfway over it, and as she kept putting glasses up, I grabbed on to her hand, forcing her to stop. She looked at me wide-eyed, and I realized this was the first time I’d touched her, in all my years of coming here, even that night when she’d invited me back to her place. I’d never touched her.

And I didn’t feel anything, not now. Touching Beth had burned my nerves, and unless it was her under my hand, I was pretty sure I’d never feel anything ever again.

I lifted my hand from hers, and she stepped away from the bar.

“Why?” she asked and pointed at my face. “That scrape you got into, was it because of her?”

“No,” I said. “But I need to see her. Talk to her. Or the guys that did this are going to come back, and they’re not going to take it easy on me.”

“Tommy,” she sighed. “Why’d you go get mixed up with this shit?” “I’ve been mixed up with this shit my whole life. Since I was a kid. All of this”—I gestured to my face, the bar, the fucking knife on my hip—“was only a matter of time.”

Lucy hung her head for a second and then looked up at me, her eyes dry and fierce. “They run shit out of that club the Moonlight Lounge.” I didn’t know anything about clubs, and she took one look at my face and muttered, “Hermit,” under her breath. She grabbed a napkin from the bar and a pen from the knot at the top of her hair and drew me a map. “I don’t know the address exactly, but it’s around here.”

She pushed the napkin back over to me. “Be…be careful, okay? And come back.”

If you can. She didn’t even have to say it; the words were written in the air above our heads.

“I’ll see you soon,” I said, and I took the napkin, tucked it in my pocket and went back out into the cooling air of my city at twilight.

The Moonlight Lounge was a warehouse on the edge of the cool side of Market. The bricks were painted black and there was no sign, just a red velvet rope and a bouncer in a suit at the door.

I didn’t recognize the bouncer, so that was a bonus, but when I got through the line up to him, he took one look at my beat-to-shit face, the dark circles under my eyes, and the beard I hadn’t bothered to shave for a few days and shook his head.

“No way.”

“I’m here to see your boss.”

“You don’t know my fucking boss,” he said, staring out at the street.

“Why don’t you tell whoever is on the end of that earpiece in your ear that Tommy MacNeill is here to see Bates.”

That made the guy’s eyes widen for just a second, and then like he was a thug extra in some shitty movie about a bodyguard looking after a president, he lifted his wrist and talked into the sleeve of his jacket.

I barely stopped myself from rolling my eyes.

Suddenly the heavy door behind us opened and it was Carissa standing there, wearing a glittering green dress and a frown. She was so beautiful I couldn’t look at her too long.

“Jesus, Tommy, really?”

“Hi, Carissa.” I waved at her.

“You armed?”

“I don’t have a gun.”

She rolled her eyes and flicked her fingers, and Bouncer was frisking me. Yanking my knife off my belt.

“This is all he has,” Bouncer said, and Carissa held out her hand and he put my knife in it. She slid it out of the leather holster, rubbed her thumb against the edge as if testing its sharpness, and then sheathed it again.

“Come along,” she said with a sigh as if I were a toddler being particularly troublesome. I followed meekly, towering over her.

Though it was early, the club was half full of young beautiful people, the shine of sweat and glitter all over them. The club was going for that old speakeasy vibe, and to my totally not cool eye, it seemed to nail it.

“Why are you here?” Carissa asked, yelling over the thrum of the music.

“I’m not waiting for Bates to send Sammy to come finish the job. I had enough waiting for a beating at St. Joke’s.” She looked at me a long time, careful and still and unreadable.

“You fucked her,” she said, her face suddenly hard, the beauty cracking around a rage that burned white-hot.

I blinked, wondering how she knew.

“Don’t bother lying, Tommy. I can see it on you.”

“I’m not going to lie,” I said quietly. “I’m just here to make things right.”

After a moment she laughed. “You don’t know?”

“Don’t know what?” Lots of things I imagined, but there was something particular she was talking about and I was starting to get pissed. She started to laugh. She laughed so hard, she bent double at the waist, holding on to her knees. Looking for one ridiculous minute like the kid I’d grown up with.

“Fuck off, Carissa, this isn’t funny.”

“But it is! It is. Tommy the hero. Except you don’t need to be here. Your girl? She saved you.”

I blinked, an empty vacuum in my chest. “What…is she here?” I stepped back, looking around like I could find her in this place. And I could, I knew it, I could find her anywhere.

“Come on,” Carissa said, and she led me around the crowd to the stairs that led up to the second floor. There was a man at the bottom of the steps, black suit, no neck.

“Bates has a type,” I said.

“Remember when you volunteered to work for him?” she asked. “In the jail cell.”

“Vaguely.”

“It never would have worked.”

“Because I have a neck?”

“Because, you, Tommy MacNeill, have a little too much honor.”

She led us through a foyer, shadowed and small, and I felt my testicles try and climb up into my body. Everything about this scene said danger. Every single animal instinct I had left in this world wanted me out of there. Now.

But still I followed her, to an arched doorway that opened up into an office.

A fucking office, with a man sitting at a desk, working on a computer like he was an accountant or something. But when Carissa walked in, he looked up immediately, like he’d scented her on the wind. Or he’d grown accustomed to the flash of sequins in the corner of his eye and looked up whenever they were there.

It was Bates. A little bit older, but still the same ice-cold face. Pale gray eyes. Same black suit. Same bowel-tightening threat of danger and power.

“This is a surprise,” he said, leaning back in the chair.

“He doesn’t know,” Carissa said, crossing to a drink car set up in the corner. “Would you like something?” she asked, one eyebrow raised.

“Me? No.”

Without asking Bates, she poured two glasses of club soda, put a lime wedge in each and walked one over to Bates.

“You said you didn’t work for him,” I said. Hating that Carissa was serving this man anything.

“She doesn’t,” Bates answered, taking the glass and setting it down on his desk. Carissa kept the other for herself, taking a big sip while watching me. “I take it you’re here to explain why you didn’t fulfill your obligations to me.”

“I am.” I’d worked on this speech on the way over, but now that I was in this luxurious gangster office, I was stupid with nerves. “I picked up Beth and I drove her out to the rehab facility and she was going to go, but then her mother was there.”

“Dr. Abigail Renshaw. Not quite what she seems, is she?”

I blinked. “No. She isn’t. She abused Beth for years.”

“I am aware of that,” Bates said. “Now.”

“I couldn’t hand her over. Not to her mom. Not after everything she did.”

“But what about what she did to you?” Carissa asked, and I turned to look at her, standing beside a door leading to a different room.

“What do you mean?”

“The thing with your grandfather?”

“How do you know that?” I asked, and she shrugged like it didn’t matter. Like the most painful parts of my life were simply gossip for her. Maybe I’d been wrong about Carissa; maybe our past had damaged her. Just way down deep where you couldn’t see it at first.

“You don’t want to hurt her, but she must have hurt you,” Carissa said.

“Dos that matter?” I asked, looking back at Bates. “I mean, is that part of the debt?”

“No,” Carissa said. “It’s just a question. I just… I want to know, I guess, if you’re still so desperate for love that you’ll hurt yourself to get it.”

I gaped at her.

“Carissa,” Bates said like he was chastising her.

But she held up her hand, walking across the room like she was in charge, not the dangerous gangster at the desk. “Are you here sacrificing your life for some girl who doesn’t deserve it? Just like you did when we were kids.”

“No,” I said.

“You’re not sacrificing yourself?” she asked. “Because Sammy is in the building and—” “She’s worth everything,” I said. “She was then and she is now. I don’t regret a single fucking thing I’ve done. Not for her. Not for Simon or Rosa or you.”

“Do you love her?”

“What does this have to do with anything?”

“Do you love her?” Carissa asked again. “She nearly got you killed. She lied to you. Kept like… a million secrets from you. You look like you fucked her, so there’s that. But does it make up for—”

“I love her,” I said. “But that doesn’t change anything.”

Carissa pursed her lips and took a sip of her drink. I stood there waiting for her to say something baiting, to ask me some deeply personal and totally inexplicable question, but she only walked away.

“Do whatever you want to him,” she said to Bates, and then she was gone.

I sagged when she left the room.

“I don’t apologize for Carissa,” he said. “I respect her too much. But she can be…ferocious on some topics.”

I laughed, an exasperated, relieved huff. I had no clue what was going on.

“This is what she’s talking about,” Bates said and turned. He picked up a remote control and pointed it at a screen I hadn’t paid much attention to, hanging on the far side of the wall.

It blinked to life, and it was Beth there. Sitting at the picnic table on Peter’s deck. She wore her hair in a bun and no makeup. On her neck were the marks I’d left on her. Hickeys and scrapes. It felt like a million years since I’d seen her, but the proof that it was only hours ago nearly wrecked me.

“Hey, everyone,” she said with a smile and a wave. “It’s me! No makeup. No costumes. I’m not even going to sing for you. I just… I want to tell you a story. And I think it’s a story I should have told you a long time ago. But first I want to tell all of you, all my fans, how grateful I am for your kindness and patience for the last few days. The last few months, really. What started as this small little thing, between us”—she wagged her finger between her and the camera, and I felt like she was talking to me—“really exploded, and I think, well, I forgot about us a little bit. And you guys have been cool and patient and kind and I’m really grateful.”

“What is this?” I whispered, not taking my eyes off the screen. Not for a minute.

“Beth uploaded this video to her YouTube channel about an hour ago.”

“The story I need to tell you is a long one. And it’s not easy. So I’m going to need a little bit more of your patience. When I was a kid, my mom was a doctor…”

I stood there riveted, watching as she told the whole story. Her mother’s career, its relative crash and burn, and then the way she’d treated Beth, which was illegal and unethical and cruel. And she told the whole story without crying. Without hate in her voice. Without any of the anger that I knew she felt.

She was calm and she was careful and she was utterly persuasive.

And I was proud of her more than I thought I was capable of.

“My mother has been on the news a lot lately, saying she’s worried about me and that I need care and treatment. And she tells a good story about it, and it’s good because in part, it’s true. I do need care. And I could use some treatment, and I’m in the process of doing that right now. And I might need medication, lots of us do, for things we can’t control, chemistry in our brains and our bodies that make us different. Not bad, just different. But that will be between me and a doctor I trust. Because I don’t trust my mother. And I mean this emphatically and without qualifications, I do not need her. To everyone listening who believes that my mother would be the best thing for me right now, you are wrong. Empathetically and without qualifications, wrong.”

“I think that part is for me,” Bates said, and I nodded, still watching, because it was like Beth had turned into a queen in the hours since I’d been gone. Like telling her story had given her strength I’d never seen before.

“Also…” She pulled in a deep breath and let it out. “I was sexually assaulted when I was a teenager. And I’ve told myself that I was okay with what happened. That I wasn’t haunted. I wasn’t scared of sex. Or men. I had healthy consensual enjoyable sex, so how could I possibly still be hurt by what happened to me? But I think that story about being okay, was a lie. And I have grown used to lying. And I can’t do it anymore. I have made a lot of mistakes. More than I can count, and some of them…” She looked off camera, and I imagined Peter there watching her. Helping her. And I felt my heart pulling in my chest. “Some of them are unforgivable. And that’s… that’s a thing I have to live with. And to any of you who are in a position like I was in, where you’re being abused, mistreated, not listened to or ignored, I want to tell you this. The world is so large. It’s bigger than you can dream. And there are people in your life who want it to be small. Who want you to feel small and incapable and without value. You aren’t. You are gigantic and you contain multitudes and you can do anything. You might need help getting there, and I urge you to find it. You can tell the truth. And let go of the secrets. And you can be your amazing and real self. And I, for one, would love to see it.”

Her smile was amazing with those two front teeth that leaned against each other.

“I don’t know when I’ll be back. I don’t know if I’ll be making more music. My heart says yes, but right now I have some things I really need to take care of. Myself. The people I love. The people I hurt. I… I have some work to do. And before I go…” She took a deep breath. “I have one more thing I have to say. Tommy, I have no idea if you’ll ever see this, but… I love you. I love you more than I’ve loved anything in my life. I think because… before this moment, you were the only person I was ever honest with. And I know that sounds ridiculous considering how I’ve lied to you…” She looked away and carefully wiped her eyes. “You always said you didn’t deserve me, but the truth, the real truth, the truth I’ve known in my bones all along, is that I didn’t deserve you. I wish…” She stopped, wiped her eyes. She tried to keep the smile on her face but couldn’t. “I think you’re right. You were always right. Wishes are dangerous, and they’re not for people like me.” Her hand reached for the screen. “This is Jada—” She shook her head. “I mean Beth. This is Beth. See you later.”

And the screen went dark.

The screen went dark, but I didn’t look away.

She couldn’t wish anymore. All this time and I’d finally succeeded in making her like me.

Wishes are dangerous, and they’re not for people like me.

The pain was gutting.

“I asked for proof,” Bates said, “of her mother’s abuse. That’s good enough for me.”

Bates sat back down, his golden head bent over the desk, and still I just kept standing there.

“You can go,” he said, not looking up.

“That’s… that’s it?”

Bates was silent.

“All these fucking years and that’s it? A YouTube video and I can go on with my life?”

“You were free to go on with your life seven years ago. It’s not my fault you didn’t.”

“Why are you doing this?” I asked. “Why have you done any of this?”

Bates got to his feet and walked around the desk, but I didn’t step back, even as the danger he radiated made every hair on my body stand up.

“I told you that night,” Bates said. “You did something for me when you killed that man. So I took care of you.”

“Are you doing this for Carissa?” I asked, unsure of what the relationship was between them.

His face went icy and cold.

“No,” he said.

“Were you a foster kid at St. Jokes?”

“I’m not in the business of answering questions. You did what I asked. The debt is paid. Now get out of here.”

“But Beth?”

“Beth is not my concern. You are no longer my concern. You are, however, Sammy’s concern, so I’d get the fuck out of here before he finds out you’re in the building. Because I do not hold Sammy’s leash.”

“What about Carissa? Do you hold her leash?”

The blow was a surprise. The punch right across my face. It sent me back three steps, nearly crashing into the drink cart. I licked my lip and tasted blood.

Fuck. That cut was never going to heal.

“Leave. Now,” Bates said, straightening the sleeve of his jacket. “And get the fuck out of my city. If I see you or hear you, you won’t get a second chance. You’ll end up dead and buried where you would have been years ago.”

His threat, I didn’t doubt it. Not for a minute. The cold that rolled off him was the absolute truth. Leave or die.

So I left.