Logan scoops up his eggs, shoves a huge helping into his mouth, and mumbles to me, “Doesn’t bother me. Eat or I’ll force-feed you.”

Right, Logan will be irritated if we act differently. I can live with that and I can definitely live with eating pancakes. Before I insert some delicious fantasticness into my mouth, I glance up at the round table, and except for Logan because we’ve already covered some of this tale of woe in late-night conversations, they are all staring at me: Isaiah, Noah, West, Chris, and Ryan.

Yup, eyes glued on me.

Staring at me like I have leeches stuck to my face or I’m about to eat leeches or I’m having a love affair with a leech. “What?”

West breaks eye contact first, readjusts that baseball cap forever on backwards and then shoves his plate of bacon in my direction. “If Linus is this guy’s mentor, do you think Linus knew?”

They all begin eating again.

No one asks if Ricky knew because these guys are smart. I don’t trust Ricky at all, but Linus... “No. Linus wouldn’t betray me. Not like that.” Would Linus undercut me to make a gain? Yes. Shoot me? No. “He respected my father too much for that.”

I pick up the bacon and I’m deliberate and slow as I nibble on it. “I need you guys to understand something. Even if Ricky knew about me being shot, he’s still moving me up. He still has interest in me. Let’s call a spade a spade. If he wanted me dead, I’d be dead. Whatever is going on, Ricky is investing in me and Ricky doesn’t let his investments go.”

“What are you getting at?” Isaiah asks.

Honestly? “I don’t know. Linus said it to me the other night and it just struck me as true.”

“Doesn’t mean it is,” Logan says.

Doesn’t mean it isn’t. “I think maybe Linus was hinting that I’m already in too deep to leave. That I’ll never be safe out and that my safer option is in—where he and Ricky can protect me.”

Logan tenses beside me and I can sense his quiet, brooding anger. “If we figure out a way to take care of your grandmother, will you quit?”

“But Linus is protecting—”

“Me,” he cuts me off. “You’ve mentioned that a few times. I’ll take care of me and you need to trust me on that.”

“How?” I push.

“You show me Tommy and if he’s the guy I saw, I go to the police.”

My lips shift because I don’t like that idea at all. Logan and Isaiah have this faith in the police, but people on the right side of the law make me squirm.

“I’m asking about the money,” Logan continues. “If you didn’t have to worry about the money and Ricky let you leave, will you quit?”

I own the table’s undivided attention again and I can’t help that it strikes me as funny that I’m the lone girl in this mess of muscle and testosterone. The urge is to say something crazy to make them all get that perplexed hysterical expression, but I then think of how serious they all seem and suddenly it’s tough to swallow the food in my mouth.

They care about me and that causes my system to glitch. I’m unworthy of all this emotion. I gently place my fork on the table, use the napkin to wipe my mouth then tell them the truth, “Yes, I would quit.”

Harvard gave me their card. Doesn’t mean they want me, but it could mean somebody else would. It means I might have a say in my destiny.

“But the amount of money I need to take care of my grandmother isn’t pocket change and can’t be made working at McDonald’s. I need cash and a lot of it.”

I don’t miss the long look Isaiah and Logan share and I really hate being on the outside of long glances. “Just spit it out.”

Logan leans to the left, pulls out the envelop Chris handed Logan when we stepped out of the bedroom this morning and tucks it under my plate. “This is yours.”

I go numb and it’s a cold numb. My pride bristles and my back straightens. I have a pretty good idea what’s in that envelope and it causes the muscles near the corner of my eye to twitch. “What is that?”

“My pay.” Logan pops a strawberry into his mouth. “For the past few days.”

“And mine,” adds West.

“And mine,” says Isaiah and then they all go down the line...Noah, Chris, and Ryan.

“But you need that money.” I’m looking at Noah and he drinks from his glass of water.

“You need it more.” His eyes ask me to not say anything else. To not mention that this money was supposed to be for an engagement ring for Echo. That he wanted to ask her to marry him before she left to go study in Colorado for the year.

All of them are careful not to watch me as they continue to eat. My head feels funny. Tingly. Like I’m experiencing a stroke. Linus’s voice, my father’s voice, the two of them scream at me to throw the money back at them—that they are searching to own me, to use me, but then my soul just hurts.

Hurts so much that my lips turn down and my fingers shake. Logan told me that he loved me, told me that he’d seen enough of what love wasn’t that he could figure out what love was.

I also know a lot of what love isn’t, and I know too well what being used is like. Being used is dirty and manipulative and creates this layer of shame that can never be washed away, but love...my eyes burn and I briefly close them...love must be the opposite.

Love must be this: six boys who a lot of people threw away. Six boys who society said were one thing and they turned out to be something else...something more...something better. Six boys who have hopes and dreams and fears...and all of those things they keep hidden deep in their souls along with their hurts because society says they aren’t allowed to feel.

Six boys who set out to make money for varying reasons. Six boys who sweat and bled and endured blisters and pain. Heat causing them to tire. A sun that was relentless and unmerciful. Six boys that at the end of the week are quiet as they hand all their money to me.

Love—it isn’t meant to hurt my pride, it’s meant to heal. Each of these boys are loving me and if I don’t accept this money, I’m not loving them back.

“But you don’t even know me.” I don’t know who I am myself.

“You make Junior smile,” says Chris.

“And talk,” adds Ryan. “Didn’t know he had this much of a vocabulary.”

Logan flips Ryan off and the two laugh.

“You helped me.” West balls up his napkin and tosses it on the table. “When dad kicked me out, you helped.”

I nod at him, he nods back and I realize that West will always be around. Even after he graduates from college. Even when he moves away from mixed martial arts fighting. Even when he’s all respectable with a wife and a home and lots of money—West will always be my family.

Family. My heart leaps and twists. I meet Isaiah and Noah’s eyes and immediately glance away. When I first met them they were lanky boys who hadn’t grown into their own skin yet. Foster kids that nobody could love, nobody tried to love, and they broke my heart...broke me...and I did whatever little I could to help, because without Dad adopting me, I would have been them...I could have been worse.

“It was never enough,” I whisper.

Isaiah clears his throat and after a few seconds leans his arms on the table. “And it was all that I had, and then, it was enough to help me survive.”

“I don’t know how to thank you,” I say slowly. Then grow cold when I realize how they want me to thank them. I have to stop selling. I have to stop selling and I have to do so without anyone getting hurt.

My hand goes to my neck as I feel like my lungs are collapsing. I can’t breathe. The air—it’s not coming in—I... The table shakes when I push away and Logan’s water sloshes over his food. I jump to my feet and all the guys look as if they are seconds away from hurtling over the table to catch me. “I need to... I need...a few minutes.”

And I turn, the wrong way, and from his seat, Logan snags my wrist and prevents me from becoming impaled by a coat hook on the wall. I about-face and rush for the front exit. Air, I just need air.

Logan

Abby bolts out of the diner like someone yelled fire. We watch through the wall of windows as she beelines it for Isaiah’s car, circles, then realizes she has no way to leave.

“That went better than expected,” says Isaiah.

Agreed. I pop one more strawberry into my mouth and stand, grabbing the envelope Abby left behind. “I’ll take care of her. Someone settle me and Abby’s bill and I’ll pay you back later.”

“I’ll cover it,” says West. “Don’t worry about the payback.”

I’ll worry about the payback.

“Logan,” Isaiah says as I step to go after Abby.

I look down at him and when he knows he has my attention he says what all of us have been thinking since Abby broke down how Ricky is moving her up. “Eric kidnapping her and having us take her out of town is making more sense. I’m not sure she can go back.”

A slow throb forms in my temples. “I know.”

Eric said he was repaying a debt—saving Abby. He must think the only way out is for her to disappear.

Without another word, I leave the death trap of a diner and find Abby leaning against Isaiah’s black Mustang. Her head is hanging forward in her hands causing her hair to hide her expression.