A knife carving up her stomach. Good God.
Phoenix pushed his tray away. “I should probably just go.”
“Why?” That upset me. I didn’t want him to walk away with anything awkward between us. I wasn’t even sure how I felt, but I knew I didn’t have any right to judge something I didn’t know anything about.
“Because . . .” He looked away and shook his head.
“Why?” I repeated, both of our lunches totally abandoned.
“Because I like you.” Phoenix turned back and met my gaze. “And I won’t be good for you.”
My throat tightened. “I think maybe you think I’m a better person than I am.”
But Phoenix shifted his chair closer to me so we were sitting next to each other, and he took my hand. “Robin.”
“Yes?”
“I’m no good for you. And you’re probably no good for me. But we’re going to do this anyway, aren’t we?”
I nodded, because looking into his dark eyes there wasn’t any other answer. I couldn’t walk away from him, and I couldn’t let him walk away from me. “Yes. We are.”
“I thought so,” he murmured, and he kissed me in the food court, a quick brush of his lips over mine.
My skin tingled, and I sighed.
Oh yeah, we were definitely going to do this.
It was the only thing I’d been sure of all summer.
When the truth was that an ordinary life with an ordinary family hadn’t just made me ordinary, it had made me naive. Because in that moment, I genuinely thought that Phoenix’s background, his anger, my secret, didn’t matter at all.
It did.
Chapter Seven
Phoenix
The very minute I knew I was done for? When Robin asked me if I loved Angel. Because when a girl asks that, she wants to know if there is room in your heart for her. I knew that not only was there room for Robin, she could probably work her way through it until she was in every single crevice, spreading like octopus ink across the ocean floor. I got in to octopuses in fourth grade, checking out every book I could at the library about them and featuring them in all my reports and art projects. The teacher wrote a note to my mother about my obsessive behavior, which I never gave her. But I remember thinking, what is so wrong with digging octopus? They have eight legs and suckers and spew ink, is it any wonder I was fascinated?
But there is a fine line our world dictates between an appropriate and healthy interest in something and obsession. If you express too little interest in anything in particular, you’re lazy, a slacker, lacking in hobbies and liable to fall in with the wrong crowd. If you show too much interest, then clearly you’re obsessive-compulsive, unnatural.
I had already been fixating on Robin, I knew that. But when she made it clear that she was interested in having me fall in love with her, or that she wanted to know if the possibility was there, I knew that I had moved into octopus territory. I wanted to know everything there was to know about her—I wanted to see her all the time, touch her, smell her, unlock the mysteries of her body.
There would be disapproval from somewhere—maybe everywhere—but I didn’t give a shit.
I walked her to her class after she mostly didn’t eat her lunch, holding her hand, which felt small and delicate in mine, ignoring everyone who glanced at us. “So what are you studying?” I asked her. “Art?”
“No. Art isn’t practical. Graphic design. It’s a way to be sort of creative and actually make a living.”
“That makes sense.” Still, I had a hard time picturing her in an office or whatever. I thought of her head bent over the kitchen table or her sketching in the park. That was when she seemed happy. “Did you ever wonder why you were born with a talent if you can’t fully use it? I mean, we can’t all be Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel, so why are we born with this burn to draw?”
“Maybe because we’re people and we’re flawed.” She glanced up at me, her hair tumbling around her face wildly as we walked down the path, students rushing past us on bikes. “For every ten thousand people who have that talent, only one will fully realize their potential.”
Sad but true. I didn’t know anyone who had reached their full potential. Most gave up long before that when the daily grind beat the crap out of them. “Life has a way of doing that. I mean, look at you and me. Neither one of us can pursue studying art. We have to be practical.”
“Yeah. I used to want to run off to Italy or France and study the masters or at the very least have the courage to set up a stall in New Orleans or some place like that and sell my paintings. The starving artist’s life. But I’m too . . . I don’t know. Afraid, I guess. Plain and simple.”
“It’s harder to let go of fear when you have something to lose. Being fearless is easier if you have nothing to risk.” In my case, I had absolutely nothing to lose. But I’d never had particularly grand ambitions. “I suppose I could just as easily be homeless in New Orleans as I can be here, so if I really wanted to do something like that I could, if I could figure out how to get there.”
Her hand squeezed mine tighter. “You’re not homeless.”
For the moment. “Riley politely asked me to leave as soon as I can. He’s worried about his custody of Easton. You know, the whole felony conviction thing.” I was glad I had told Robin about why I’d been in. I didn’t want her to find out from someone else, and I didn’t want secrets between us if we were going to have a shot at a relationship. Granted, I hadn’t told her the full truth, how I had found Iggy raping my mother, but she knew that yes, I was in fact guilty of the crime I’d been in jail for. I had nearly killed him, and I had done it for my mother, whether she appreciated it or not, because no man should be allowed to use his physical power over a woman.
Robin still had a secret, I knew that. Something had happened the night she had blacked out and she knew what it was. She just wasn’t ready to share, and that was okay. I was about 99 percent sure it had something to do with Nathan, because that made the most sense. It wasn’t that hard to imagine she was wasted, his girlfriend was gone, he pushed her mouth down on his dick because everyone is always after what they can get.
I was going to get the truth, and then I was going to make Nathan pay for it.
But that was for later.
Right now, I just wanted to sit back and let Robin work her way inside my heart with her shy smiles and her big, brown eyes.
“Oh,” she said, and she bit her lip. “I guess I can understand that, but it still sucks.”
“I don’t blame Riley or Tyler. They’ve done a lot for me.” More than I had actually expected. But it did feel like with our mothers gone, the bond between us was stronger. “I’ll figure something out.”
“You can stay over with me whenever you need to,” she said.
I smiled. The words were said casually, like she was being polite, but I knew better than that. She wanted me there. I wanted to be there. “Cool. Thanks. But I don’t get off work until eleven and I don’t want to keep you up.”
She stopped walking. “This is my building.” She gestured behind her to a glass monstrosity. “What are your days off work? Do you know yet?”
“Wednesday and Thursday. Weekends are big for tattoo walk-ins.”
Her face lit up. “Those are my days off, too. Well, and Mondays and Tuesdays. I work Friday through Sunday.”
“That works out then.” I glanced up at her classroom building, knowing she had to go, not wanting to let her leave. I had never felt this, the compulsion to be with a girl every second I could, and I didn’t know what to do with it.
“Have a good first day at work,” she told me. “This is going to be a great opportunity for you.”
“Thanks,” I said, surprised. It was just a standard thing to say, I guess, but it wasn’t what I usually heard. What might just be politeness sounded an awful lot like caring to me, and I was hungry to hear that. It might be what prompted me to say, “Tonight I’ll probably be really tired, but can I stay over tomorrow night? What time do you go to bed?”