“I paid for it, and she only had one slice. I also made her eat the bell peppers and mushrooms, if that makes a difference.” Edie yawned, rubbing her eye sockets with the base of her hands before standing up. She stretched, her long limbs on full display. She was barefoot, and a purple tank top and cut-off denim shorts clung to her body.

“And Coke? Really? Again?” I growled, getting in her face. I was angry. So fucking angry. At Mel and Katie and Edie and Luna and Val and life, and fuck, women were such complicated creatures. I tried goddamned hard to stay away from them as much as I could, but they seemed to be everywhere.

“Jesus, Trent, she brushed her teeth. It was a one-off, so I thought we could splurge. And I mean really splurge. What the hell!” She bolted to the other side of the room, sitting on the floor and putting on her shoes. I wanted her to get the fuck out. At least, I thought I did.

“Last but not least—the computer? Really? No fucking class whatsoever.”

“We were watching YouTube videos!” she exclaimed, snagging her backpack and getting up in a hurry. “Geez!”

“YouTube videos. Right.” I let loose a chuckle, pulling out my wallet from my back pocket and plucking out the money to pay her. “Wasn’t it you who told me to never bullshit a bullshitter?”

“I’m not bullshitting you!”

I shoved the banded stack of money to her chest and growled into her face, “Just go.”

“Hey, wait…” She hurried after me as I pivoted toward Luna’s room. The money dropped to the floor. She didn’t bother to pick it up.

“Luna talked.”

I spun in place, my eyebrows dropping down.

“Edie…” I warned. If she was lying again, there were going to be consequences. She fidgeted with the hem of her shirt, tugging at it, but her eyes were determined and brave. She didn’t look away.

“She did! When I tucked her into bed. I told her I had fun tonight, and she said ‘me, too’ and it was small, but I heard it, Trent. All I wanted, all I ever wanted was to make her feel not like a robot or a charity case. We ate junk food and watched TV past her bedtime. We broke the rules and she survived. Not only that, but I’m pretty sure she had fun. Maybe it’ll help her through another week of therapy sessions and you acting like she is in some kind of dire situation.”

I rubbed my forehead. Shit. She was doing this again. Confusing me. And the worst part was that I believed her. I shouldn’t have, but I clung to each of her words and let them settle in my stomach and revive me. Luna had spoken. This was a huge breakthrough, but daring to believe it and hoping for more could break me—and I didn’t know if I could trust Edie as far as I could throw her.

We stared at each other for a long beat, from a safe distance.

“She talked,” I repeated, finally. It felt monumental. As if she was going to wake up tomorrow and start blabbing about the weather. It wasn’t the case, but Edie was only the second person Luna had spoken to.

She nodded. “Her voice is so sweet and soft. Like velvet on cool skin.”

Who the fuck talked like that? Edie. Edie talked like that. “I’ve never heard her.”

“You should. It’s really great.”

I believed her.

She swallowed. “Let me take her to the beach on Sunday. She’s never been in the water. I want to…show her things.”

I looked down, wanting to say no. I was scared for Luna. I didn’t trust Edie with Luna outside the apartment building. But I also couldn’t just hang out with them, because that wasn’t appropriate, nor beneficial for the raging obsession I was beginning to develop toward this girl.

“You know what your problem is, Trent?” She was panting, breathing fire, and I was too selfish to cool her down. I liked her hot. I liked her messy. I liked her all over the place, because that’s how she made me feel. Deprived. There was some poetic justice in it.

“No, but I’m sure you’re about to tell me.”

“You fight the tide. You fling your arms, kicking your legs, trying to escape it, overpower it. The secret is to go with the flow. The secret is to ride the wave. Don’t be afraid to get wet.”

I was wet, though. I was fucking dripping. Shit, half the time, it felt like I was drowning. Maybe that was her point. Edie was a lot of things. Stupid wasn’t one of them.

“Don’t forget your money.” I pointed at the floor, clearing my throat and averting my gaze. I was uncomfortable to say the least, and that was a fucking first. She walked over and picked it up, flipping through and pulling four fifties off the top.

“There.” She tried to hand me the rest. “I think it was, like, four hours.”

“It’s yours.” I shook my head, curling her fingers around the wad of cash. “All of it.”

“What?” She blinked, thumbing through them. The Benjamins were fanning each other like in the movies. “That’s a lot of money.”

“Twelve thousand dollars.”

“What?!”

I shrugged, staring at the pizza box on the island to keep myself from doing something stupid. “You said you needed the money. I’m not going to ask you why. But I am going to be a responsible adult and strongly advise you to get this situation sorted quickly, because it’s not an easy sum to come up with on a monthly basis.”

“I appreciate the tip, and the money, but I can’t take this.” She shoved it to my chest.

“You can, and you goddamn will.”

“No.” She took a step back, the money falling between us again. We were both too engrossed to even look at it. It wasn’t the fucking point of all this.

“Give me one reason why not.”

She started counting with her fingers. “One—it’s a lot of money I didn’t earn, two—it would make me owe you, and three—because we’re not friends. We’re enemies.”

I used the same finger method. “One—it might be a lot of money, but not for me. Two—I don’t expect shit from you, and three—it’s cute how you think you’re my enemy. You’re not on my level.”

Her stare told me she didn’t care that I’d undermined her. And for a good reason. The girl had managed to get her way and steal my shit several times. She might have been the underdog, but she sure as hell knew how to put up a fight.

I expected her to argue over this, as she had with any subject matter, but she surprised me by tucking the money into her bag. She swallowed loudly—her pride, most likely—flung her backpack over her shoulder and silently made her way to the door. Watching her made me feel like shit, so again, I looked the other way.

“Thank you, Trent.”

“It’s fine.”

“No, I mean it.”

I meant it, too. I didn’t know what the fuck was happening with her, or to her, but I knew the idea of her being in deep shit made me queasy.

The door was beginning to slide shut in my peripherals as I braced myself against the counter, and I couldn’t resist showing her that not only was I getting wet, but that we were both about to get soaked if we weren’t careful.

“You still there?” I asked.

She didn’t answer, but I didn’t hear the click of the automatic lock.

“The date. It sucked.”

I heard the smile in her voice when she said, “I didn’t have sex with Bane after you found me in the reservoir.”

Click.

I didn’t go after her. But I was still screwed because I knew that next time—I would.

LOVE IS MERCILESS.

Love is cruel.

Love is not a feeling, it is a weapon.

Love destroys.

Love destroys.

Love destroys.

I couldn’t stop reading that line on my way back from Theo. My car had stopped working two days before and was at the shop. I couldn’t afford a taxi or an Uber, so I took two buses each way. It gave me the time to read an old paperback I’d found in our library. An autobiography of a French poet who ended up committing suicide after his fiancé left him for a man she treated as a nurse in the army. The other man was a hero, so French Poet Dude’s unrequited love was swept under the carpet.

Love destroys. These weren’t just words for me. They had weight, and a scent, and a tainted color that never faded. Every single person I’d loved had hurt me.

I still had to find a way to get my hands on Trent’s flash drive. I knew he carried it with him everywhere he went—he’d told me it was in his pocket while he’d had sex with someone else—and also knew he was too smart to leave any of the things my father wanted to get his hands on, on any of his devices. That made my task impossibly hard, but at least I was beginning to find the patterns of his everyday life, which Jordan had also asked for.

I put the book down, watching the Pacific Ocean from the window.

“It gets better,” someone in my vicinity said, and I wasn’t sure whether they were talking on the phone or to me, but it didn’t matter, because I didn’t believe it. Not for a moment. I fished my phone out of my backpack and checked my messages.

Bane

Are you coming to surf tomorrow?

Unknown

If she comes with you tomorrow, I want her grandmother to be there.

Trent.

The idea that he’d taken the time to open a message and write to me—spent this time on me—was pitifully thrilling. What was it about this man that made me want to break all my rules? No getting attached, no complicating things, and absolutely no poking the tiger—Jordan Van Der Zee—giving him a reason to pounce on Theo.

I tried to tell myself that this was innocent. I was taking Luna to the beach. Trent was not going to be there. It was reasonable enough. And Luna could really use a one-on-one with the ocean. I opened the first text message, to Bane:

No can do. I’m taking my boss’ daughter to the beach to collect seashells. Next week. x

Then I opened another one, writing, deleting, amending, correcting, deleting again, before finally pressing the send button.