She bit at her bottom lip and nodded. “Anyway… enough about me. What about you? How did you get out? I mean, how are you no longer working for this… Branch?”

“The guy who ran the program I was in is dead.”

Her hands tightened on the coffee cup. “Did you… you know—”

“Kill him? No. But I would have, if I’d been given the chance.”

“You can’t mean that.”

I didn’t say anything.

She drew her shoulders back, and her shirt tightened across her chest. She met my eyes. I knew what my eyes could do to girls—sometimes they were obvious about it, twittering on and on about how blue they were, how unnatural they were—but Elizabeth didn’t seem unnerved by them. If anything, it seemed like she saw right past the color, right into the blackness of my soul beyond them. And she didn’t turn away.

She pursed her lips and the gesture made them plump, made her cheekbones carve severe lines across her face.

My heart shuddered one foot away from my mouth, and both wanted to haul Elizabeth closer and taste the blueberry on her tongue.

Shit.

I got up, whirled around, set my hands on the edge of the counter. All the muscles in my body convulsed, wanting to move, wanting to do something other than this dance that wasn’t getting us anywhere.

What was it about this girl?

I’d only known her a day, and already I couldn’t stop thinking about her.

No, that wasn’t true.

I’d known her a lot longer than a day.

Elizabeth had always been there, haunting me even when the memories were buried.

“Nick?” she said, so quiet I barely heard her over the stomping of my heart.

“Yeah?”

“Did I… I mean… do you want me to leave?”

I inhaled so deep, I felt my lungs press against my ribs. I turned around. “I should probably take a shower.”

A cold one.

“Okay.” She pushed the chair back and stood. “Will you meet me in town later? After my shift?”

“Yeah. Eight, right?”

She nodded.

“I’ll be there,” I said.

She grabbed the trash from our breakfast. “I’ll see you later, then.”

I didn’t relax until the door shut behind her.

22

ELIZABETH

EVAN, CHLOE, AND I TOOK OUR BREAK together since it was dead and Chloe didn’t have any tables. We ordered fried pickles—one of Merv’s most popular appetizers—and a round of sodas.

I got to sit next to Evan thanks to Chloe. She complained that her feet hurt, and that she wanted to stretch out sideways and put them up on the seat beside her.

Evan and I bumped shoulders when he scooted in beside me.

“So what’s the plan for tonight?” Evan asked.

Chloe raised a brow at me and winked. “We get off at the same time, right?”

I dug around in my bag for the cell phone I’d bought earlier to replace the broken one and checked the messages. Zero new messages. Not surprising. “I get off at eight.”

“Me too,” Evan said.

“Let’s all do something, then,” Chloe suggested.

“I would, but…” I trailed off, torn between wanting to spend time with Nick and wanting to be with the group again. Even though Nick was ungodly good-looking, I still had a major crush on Evan. Evan would always be here, and Evan was safe. Nick would leave again, before too long, and he was most definitely not safe.

“But what?” Chloe coaxed.

“I promised Nick I’d hang out with him.”

Evan tensed next to me.

Chloe dipped a pickle spear in her puddle of ranch dressing. “Bring him with.”

“I don’t know about that,” Evan said. “I don’t like the guy.”

Chloe snorted. “You don’t like him because he’s probably better-looking than you.”

Evan grumbled and slid out of the booth. “I should get back to work.”

His break wasn’t even half over.

“Oh, he’s pouting,” Chloe said, and waved a pickle spear in the air at me. “Pouting is good.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t bring Nick.” I took a drink of soda. “After all, the first time I saw him, he had Evan by the collar of his shirt.”

“That’s because Evan can be a dick sometimes.”

“Chloe!”

“Well, it’s true. It’s just male posturing. Don’t worry about it.” She pulled a compact mirror out of her purse and examined herself, picking at her hair. “I need to get my roots dyed again. I look like hell.”

That was so far from the truth. Chloe was gorgeous, and dark roots showing through her sunny blond hair wouldn’t change that.

We finished off the rest of the pickles in record time and grabbed our dishes.

“You want my opinion?” Chloe said as we walked back to the kitchen. “Bring Nick along. If anything, it’ll make Evan jealous. And a jealous man is a motivated man.”

“I don’t know if he’d come anyway. He seems to like to keep to himself.”

“Oh, girlie, if he likes you at all, he’ll come.”

She pushed through the kitchen door, her blond ponytail swinging behind her.

A few minutes after eight, Evan came back to the kitchen, where I was putting in one last order. “Nick is here,” he said. “He’s at the bar.”

“The bar?” I echoed. I’d thought he was eighteen, nineteen at the most. But if he was at the bar, then that made him at least twenty-one.