“SHUT UP!”

He stretches out his hand. “Take my hand, Pink.”

“Thanks, but no.”

“Fine. Thumb wars?”

“God, you’re such a baby.”

“You’re a coward. Come on, fucking use me for something. Want to fight? Fine. Want to hold my hand? Even better. Not sure? I bet you can’t pin my thumb under yours no matter what you do.”

Gritting my teeth, I clutch his hand, because I know—and he knows—I desperately need the contact. A frisson runs through my body, and I wish I had the strength to deny him, but I’m shaking. And he looks strong. Like nothing can touch him.

My boyfriend.

My ex.

The only guy I’ve ever had sex with. Ever wanted. Ever loved.

He holds my wrist and tugs. “Come closer,” he urges. The tenderness in his eyes makes the walls around my heart wobble.

“What? We’re playing with our thumbs, not our tongues,” I say defensively.

“Really now.” He smiles again, the smile tender. Even his hold on my arm, his whispered voice, sounds tender. “Come closer, Pink.”

I narrow my eyes and move closer.

He presses my thumb underneath his, and I realize he was tricking me. He chuckles wickedly, and I can’t even protest, because the plane is taking off. I suck in a breath and glance out the window at the ground speeding beneath us. For a couple of minutes I try to calm down, but it’s near impossible. Mackenna’s hand is still on mine, but instead of squishing my thumb, he’s rubbing it.

And it feels so wrong and right and deep in me and soft over me that I could probably stand the plane falling right now, but I can’t stand his hand on mine.

“Let go,” I say.

He lets go, and an odd glimmer of pity or sadness passes his face. “Just relax,” he says.

I squeeze my eyes shut. His voice does things to me. He groans and says, “Come here, baby.”

“The wolf says to the lamb. Don’t call me baby,” I whisper and refuse to obey, tucking my hand under my thigh. I’m acutely aware of every inch that separates us.

He leans over. “You’re anything but a lamb.”

Our eyes meet and everything about him, from his voice to his scent to his eyes, unsettles me to the point where I want to cry or scream.

The plane jolts again, and a couple of nasty clouds are coming toward us. My eyes blur, and everything in my body presses into the hollow in my tummy. I’m tense as I grip the seat, praying for the clonazepam to take effect. If it weren’t for Magnolia, I might not give a shit about dying. But aside from Mom, I’m all she has. And Mom is . . . Mom.

Mackenna’s glass is refilled. I watch his hand every time he lifts it, sips, and drops it. His fingers are magical. He once played the piano like the keys were an extension of his fingers, but right now, he’s a rocker dude. He’s always been bad, but he is a real guy with a real love of music and sound.

The pill starts taking effect and my eyes flutter shut. I make sure to slide my head to the opposite side of where he sits.

He says nothing.

As my head starts getting fuzzy, I cuddle to the window, trying to make sure my shoulder doesn’t touch his.

I remember stealing out to see him every afternoon. It didn’t matter that my mother worked for the DA. It didn’t matter that his father was a criminal. We were both in the courtroom that day, and I was already half crazy in love with him—unbeknownst to me, to my mother, or to him.

I insisted on going to court with my mother that day, telling her simply that I felt like going. She eyed me warily but could not deny me. I sat outside on a long bench, with him close. I had heard that his father was going to be given many, many years for dealing.

Maybe I shouldn’t have slid up to sit closer to him the day they set bail. We could’ve been seen, but I couldn’t help it. He was sitting there, looking at his hands, when his father and my mother were at it inside.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Me too,” he said.

He lifted his head, and I could feel him looking at me as intensely as if I was burning. I reached out to take his hand.

And that was all that we needed.

He’d defended me from bullies at school, and now I held his hand whenever we were alone. That day we were alone in an empty hall on a single bench, and the boy I couldn’t stop thinking about was ready to hear how much his father would have to pay to remain free until the trial date.

“Meet me at the docks where we met last time,” he said to me, squeezing my hand just as the courtroom doors swung open.

With a quick nod, I pried my hand free.

My mother walked out and called me back to her with a clear, crisp, lawyerly command. I felt him watch me—lonely, motherless, and, soon, fatherless—from that bench as they took his father away from him until he made bail. My mother said once the trial took place and his dad was convicted, Mackenna would be taken in by some uncle who was just as bad a gangster as the father and that soon, he’d probably be an outcast in school and would have to move.

It seemed like my mother was a witch. Everything she predicted came true.

But before he left, and between bail and trial, he was mine.

For days, weeks, months, he was all mine and I was his.

Sometimes, when I walked home from school, he walked with me. All my bullies mysteriously got purple eyes. When my mother saw him one day, she pulled me aside. “He’s up to no good, that boy. Revenge, that’s what that boy is up for. You stay away from him, Pandora.”