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“Why is he at Nick’s? At 3:30am?” Shane asked as they hurled towards an exit.

“No idea,” she said. “But whatever it is, it can’t be good.”

“Does Cary know you and Nick are…” Shane cleared his throat loudly, like he had a tennis ball stuck in it, “dating?”

“No.”

Shit.

This was not how he’d foreseen his eighteenth birthday playing out. He’d planned to drop a second tab, take Jenna into one of the bathrooms, and fuck her until he couldn’t remember his name anymore. Those few blissful post-orgasm moments of forgetting how much he wanted to cease to exist without Laney, of how miserable the past few months had been, of how he could barely crawl out of bed in the morning knowing that he wasn’t going to see her or talk to her that day, had been the only thing keeping him going.

The last time he’d seen her was on a constant loop in his mind. The sounds coming out of her mouth, the feel of her hand on his crotch, the look of passionate delight on her face when he came… It was a firebrand on the inside of his eyelids. She was all he saw when he was in bed with Jenna, when he jerked off, when he worked, when he was sober, when he was high, didn’t matter. All he saw was Laney, pinned beneath him and begging him to touch her.

But then he remembered the after…

After was like the worst hangover he’d ever had. The worst everything. That look on her face, the sound of her sobs, the feel of her tears through his shirt.

Replay. Rewind. Repeat.

He’d been so busy reliving those wonderful, awful hours that it hadn’t occurred to him that she might have moved on. Might have a boyfriend.

When he’d seen them together, he hadn’t even been able to form a thought. Not a single one. He’d felt her, in the crowd, but it wasn’t until Jenna moved Laura out of the way that he saw her, some guy wrapped around her like she belonged to him.

No thoughts. Just noise. A whistling, like a kettle left on the stove too long.

And then suddenly they were outside and his hand was sore and he didn’t know how they’d gotten there, and his head had been in her lap.

“We need to get you home,” Shane said, hailing a cab.

She was pale, shaken, and Shane was worried. If Cary found out she’d been at a rave downtown… and worse, if he found out that she’d been screwing one of his guys…

Her chin was trembling as she stared out the window. He hesitated for a moment, a little worried she’d deck him for trying to touch her, but he couldn’t help himself. He reached out an arm and pulled her close, burying his nose in her hair, the scent of lavender and sweat filling his nostrils as he stroked her arms, her back, her thighs, her neck, her ears… just touched her gently, sweetly, everywhere he could until he felt her start to relax.

He kept up a running stream of commentary, murmuring to her about his summer at the yard and how business was picking up. How Jerry had bought him a tv for his room so he’d stop walking in on him watching the porn channel in the living room. How he’d almost ripped off his middle finger when a winch snapped.

He talked about everything and about nothing, wrapping her up in his voice like a blanket.

When they finally pulled onto her street, Laney sat up and let out a breath. Cary’s car wasn’t in the driveway, and there were no lights on.

He squeezed her hand.

“It’s going to be okay, baby,” he murmured into her hair.

She nodded, and then slipped out of the cab and into the house.

The cab pulled out of the driveway, and Shane watched the houses whiz by as they headed out of town to Jerry’s.

“Can I say something?” the driver said, looking at Shane in the mirror.

“Go ahead.” Shane was too exhausted to argue.

“I don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into, but would you listen to a stranger if I told you to get out of this cab and never go back there?”

Shane closed his eyes. “I keep trying. And keep failing.”

“Try harder,” the driver said, before turning his attention back to the road.