Avery nonchalantly shrugs, tearing her gaze off me and fixes it on him. “I was bored. Thought I’d get out of the house for a while.”

“Good. You need to,” he says and I catch him glancing down the top of her dress. In the middle of it, he notices me noticing his not so discreet checking out. “Who are you?” he asks Avery, and I can tell right away that he must have a thing for her or something by the coldness in his tone.

“This is Tristan,” Avery tells him. “He’s one of the people helping build my house.”

“Oh.” He relaxes and gives me a chin nod. “It’s nice to meet you, man.”

“Likewise,” I say, deciding maybe it’s time to make that trip to the bathroom so I can get on with my night plans.

“So what do you guys want to drink?” he asks. “First round on the house, for giving this beautiful and very deserving girl over here a roof over her head.”

“I’ll just have a Coke,” I tell him, wishing I could say with a bit of Jack Daniel’s in it.

“All right.” He looks at Avery. “And I’m guessing just the usual diet Coke for you.”

“Two actually. And one water.” She points over her shoulder at where Quinton and Nova are sitting with a menu opened up in front of them, but their focused on each other, not picking something out to eat. “I’m here with a few more people.”

“All right. Be back in a sec.” He leaves to get our drinks.

“So you don’t drink either, huh?” Avery asks me, fixing her attention back on me.

I shake my head. “Not really.”

“And neither does Nova and Quinton, I take it.”

“Yeah, are you getting excited? You get to spend the night with a bunch of boring, sober people,” I joke with a forced smile.

“I’m glad,” she says. “It makes it easier to keep my own sobriety.”

That shocks me a little. “For how long?”

She touches her collarbone, where there’s another tattoo. “Two years, three months, and fifteen days,” she tells me as I read the black ink on her smooth, flawless skin. Never forget the strength it took to free yourself. “How long has it been for you?”

“I’m not a recovering alcoholic,” I say, my eyes flicking back to hers.

“Then what are you?” she asks with her head angled to the side, strands of her hair framing her face; strands I want to brush back and tuck behind her ear, but I won’t.

I’m not sure whether to tell her the truth. It’s hard to say how she’ll react. People tend to get a little scared when you mention drugs, especially things like meth and heroin. I open my mouth, fully intending just to tell her weed, but the truth comes out.

“I was into heroin and meth pretty hardcore for a while,” I say and I swear to God the bag of meth in my pocket jumps out and says: And he’s about to do it again.

I expect her to ask how long I’ve been clean, but she says, “That’s good. That you got cleaned up from that I mean.” She seems really nervous and reaches for a napkin and starts shredding it to pieces. “I’ve heard that stuff can really ruin your life.” The way she says it has me wondering if she’s speaking from experience. Not personally, but maybe someone close to her.

“That tattoo on your neck.” Before I can stop myself, I graze my finger across it. I quickly pull my hand away, playing it off as cool, when really I want to leave my fingers there, feel the softness of her skin just a little bit longer. “You got that when you got clean?”

She tries to appear calm, but I detect a hint of a shiver, perhaps from my touch. She peels off another piece of the napkin. “Once I hit the one-year marker.” She traces her finger over the tattoo and this time I notice there’s a scar above it, right across her throat. It’s faint but still there, across her skin. Her finger trembles as she touches the scar, then drops her hand to the countertop. “So what’s it like building a house?”

It’s clear she wants a subject change so I give it to her. “Honestly?” I ask and she nods. “Hot and boring.”

She laughs, finally shoving the napkin to the side and looking at me again and not in a way that she has to look at me because we’re sitting here, chatting. She’s looking at me like she wants to look at me, like she’s fully noticing me now, like she’s enjoying sitting here beside me. “So why are you doing it then?”

I nod toward Nova and Quinton without taking my eyes off her. “Those two are into it and they asked me to come with them.” I pause. “They keep me out of trouble.”

She nods. “Gotcha. So then they’re kind of like you’re sponsors or something.”

“Yeah, something like that,” I say, not wanting to get into the details of our complicated triangle.

She’s about to say something else when suddenly someone says something really loud and her attention snaps to the side of us. I sense her tense up, her hands balling into fists, her jaw setting tight. I turn to find what’s got her so scared and see a guy striding toward us through the crowd with his eyes focused solely on her as he pushes people out of his path. He looks rough around the edges; short hair, goatee, arms covered in tattoos that go up to his shoulders and his neck.

“Fuck,” she utters under her breath. “I can’t handle this shit tonight.”

I’m about to ask her what when the guy reaches us. “You didn’t call me back,” he says to Avery.

“That’s because I had nothing to say.” Avery reaches for her napkin and starts ripping it to pieces.

He moves around to the back of her and her whole body goes rigid. “We need to f**king talk, Avery. You can’t just keep ignoring me.”

“Of course I can,” she says, staring ahead instead of at him. “Besides, you’re not even supposed to be talking to me at all. Court’s orders.”

Shit. This is the last thing I want to get in the middle of. I’m about to get up and walk away, go to the bathroom and do my thing, when the guys says, “Who the f**k is this?”

I’ve had my ass kicked many times. I’m an ex-junkie who used to deal and steal and mess with the wrong people. In fact, I almost got killed over it once. That alone should have me getting up and leaving, because this guy seems like the kind who would start swinging with no real cause except for he thinks I’m doing something to him. But Avery looks at me with this plea in her eyes that says Please don’t leave me.

“He’s just a friend, Conner,” she says tightly. “So don’t do anything stupid.”

Conner. The guy the bouncer was talking about.

Conner stares me down, trying to intimidate me and I stare right back, refusing to look away, knowing what it’ll mean if I do. Finally, he’s the one who gives up and looks back at Avery.

“Can I talk to you in private?” he asks, leaning in toward her.

“No,” Avery says, attempting to sound firm, but there’s fear in her voice. Why is this girl afraid of him? I wonder if it has to do with the scar on her neck.

“It’s about Mason,” Conner says.

“Don’t you dare say his name,” she snaps, shoving him back. “You don’t even deserve to say it.”

Rage flares in Conner’s eyes and suddenly he has Avery by the arm and is dragging her through the crowd toward the back of the building. Part of me is screaming at myself to stay out of it but the other part of me wants to run after them.

I hesitate, deciding what I’m going to do. “Fuck,” I say and then get up from the stool, pushing after them, wondering just how big of a mess I’m running after. And if I can handle it.

Chapter 5

When I reach them, Avery is jerking her arm, trying to get it out of his hold as he slams his hand against the back door and steps outside. I follow a few moments later and by the time I get out there, he’s got her trapped against the wall by the Dumpster and is already yelling at her. I can tell he’s definitely done something to hurt her in the past, by the way she flinches every time he raises his voice. I’m going back and forth with whether to go back inside or step in. Do I want to get into this mess? Can I handle this mess?

“You made it sound worse than it was,” he shouts, getting in her face, veins bulging in his neck. “This is bullshit.”

She hugs her arms around herself. “All I did was tell the truth, you f**king asshole,” she yells back, but her voice cracks.

“You are such a f**king liar,” he says, slamming his hand against the Dumpster and causing her to wince. “A f**king alcoholic just like your mother.”

“I’m nothing like my mother,” she shouts back, getting brave enough to get in his face. “And I’m sober now. And being a drunk is a hell of a lot better than what you are.”

I see him raise his hand and my uncertainty whether to get into this mess vanishes in a heartbeat. I stride forward and shove him back, knowing this is all about to blow up in my face, especially when he ends up bashing his head into the Dumpster.

“Shit,” Avery says, staring in horror at Connor as he works to regain his footing. She pushes me back toward the door without taking her eyes off him. “Tristan, go back inside.”

I gape at her. “You’re seriously trying to protect me right now.”

She gives me another push, this time looking at me, and all I can see is fear in her eyes. “Trust me. It’s for your own good.”

I’m shaking my head, confused as hell, because this guy was just about to beat the crap out of her and she’s trying to protect me instead of herself, when Conner gets to his feet.

“You’re f**king dead, pretty boy,” he says, reaching for his pocket, with this annoying smirk on his face.

What is with all the pretty boy comments tonight?

“Avery, let’s go inside,” I say, taking Avery buy the arm and guiding her behind me. I can sense something bad is about to happen. Whatever he’s about to pull out of his pocket is not going to be a cigarette—that’s for sure. It’s a knife and not a small pocketknife, but a larger, hunting-type knife.

I’ve had a few guns pulled out on me before, knives, brass knuckles; it’s nothing new. Yet it is. Because I’m sober. When I was high, it was easier to ignore the bigger picture. But I can fully see it now—how easily I could die if this guy wanted to kill me.

I instantly step in front of Avery and spread my hands out to the side, protecting her. “Go inside,” I call over my shoulder.

“Just friends, huh?” Conner shakes his head, aggravated, as he moves toward us with the knife out in front of him. “I knew that shit couldn’t be true. You’re too much of a slut to have a friend that’s a guy.”

I hear Avery dialing someone on her cell phone from behind me. The cops I hope.

Seconds later, Conner takes a swing at me and I double back, but he ends up clipping my side. I stagger over my feet as the tip of the knife splits my shirt and grazes the skin. I quickly recover and throw a punch of my own, my fist connecting with his jaw. His eyes redden with anger and I’m not sure if hitting him was a good idea or not.

He lets out this growl and then dives at me with no control over his movements at all, like he would easily kill me and not care, but I jump to the side and he ends up ramming into the building wall behind us. He curses, then turns around, wiping some blood off his split lip. Dead, he mouths.

Avery shouts something and I hear sirens seconds later. Thank f**king God. Conner glances down at the end of the alley and then with no hesitation, he takes off running in the other direction, hoping over the fence at the end. I start to chase him down, when Avery yells, “No, don’t.” Her hand touches my arm. “Let him go.”

I turn around. “Let him go? He just tried to kill me.”

“If you chase him down, then he might finish the job,” she says in a serious voice, her eyes wild with fear, and I can feel her pulse racing in her fingertips.

I settle my breathing before I speak again. “Are you okay?”

She gapes at me. “I’m fine. But what about you?” She lifts up my shirt without even asking first. She examines the cut on my side, her fingers tracing gently around it, but I barely feel a thing, too busy watching her watching me. “It doesn’t look too deep.” Her voice quivers as she pulls down my shirt down. “But you might want to get it checked out, just in case.”

“It’s fine. I’ve had worse,” I tell her. The fear and pain in her eyes tell me so has she. We stand there for a moment, just staring at each other, breathing in and out. I have no idea what the hell is going on, not just between her and me, but with her and that Conner guy. I’m about to ask her, when the cops show up.

We end up answering a few questions and filing a report. Nova and Quinton come out when I text them. I pick up bits and pieces of the conversation between Avery and the cops and put together enough that Conner is her ex-husband and that he just got out of jail for something. I want to ask her a ton of questions and I’m planning on doing so, but I never get the chance. After the police leave, we all get into the Jeep and she drives us back to the motel. Nova asks her a few questions, but Avery is vague and Nova being Nova senses that Avery doesn’t want to talk about it and instantly drops the questioning. I think about staying in the car when we pull up to the motel. I just want to know… well, I’m not sure what I want to know. If she’s okay? If she’s going to be okay? But Quinton ushers me out, despite me giving him a dirty look.

I’m heading back to my motel room when I hear Avery say, “Hey, Tristan, can I talk to you for a minute?”