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college guy? What if it had been someone from Op Wraith? I was watching from outside, but I was trying to stay far enough back to give you privacy. It took me way too long to get in there. If it had been a professional, you’d already be dead.”
    I bit my lip. “I’m sorry.”
    “You could be in danger. And you’re making it easier, not harder, for the bad guys to get you.”
    What else could I do but apologize? Should I do it again?
    He sighed. “I’m genuinely curious, here, doll. What were you thinking?”
    I couldn’t look at him. “I was thinking I wanted to have fun. I was thinking I didn’t want to brood over what happened to my dad. I was thinking...” I shrugged. “I was thinking, ‘What’s the point?’”
    “What?”
    “It’s a big joke. I mean, here I am, going to college, pretending like I have a shot at a normal future. But I don’t, do I? Dewhurst-McFarland is a huge company. They aren’t going to forget I exist. I’ll spend the rest of my life like this. Hiding out. And I don’t see the point of even trying anymore. It’s easier to just numb everything.”
    “Look, that isn’t true,” he said.
    “It is,” I said. I stood up and began straightening the pillows on my couch. “Do you know why my dad gave me the serum?”
    “You were in a car accident.”
    “You know
why
I was in a car accident?”
    “I thought the definition of an accident was that there was no reason,” he said.
    “How about a bottle of tequila and a lot of coke?” I said. I fluffed a pillow. “Sometimes, I think that maybe I’ve been trying to kill myself for a long time.” I punched the pillow. “And then he went and gave me that serum.” I looked at Griffin. “Now I
can’t
kill myself.”
    He rubbed the top of his head.
    He didn’t know what to say to me now. I thought about the things that Clint had said about me earlier that night. That I was unfeeling. That if a guy didn’t like my behavior, he had to deal with it. I thought of the things Rusty had said to me. They weren’t very nice, and he didn’t have the right to hurt me, but where they really that far off? What was I doing?
    I sank back down on my couch. “Maybe my life has gotten a little out of control.”
    Griffin came into the living room. He sat down on the couch next to me, but he didn’t look at me. Instead he rested his head in his hands. “I felt like killing myself before.”
    “Yeah?”
    He leaned back. “I’m glad I didn’t. I’m not saying my life is peaches and cream now, but it’s better than it was.”
    I looked into his gray eyes. He was such an enigma. He was so together most of the time. Then he’d pop out with stuff about his tattoo or tell me something that made him seem vulnerable. But almost as soon as he’d opened up, he’d close back up again, pulling back into himself. Why was he hiding from me? What didn’t he want me to see?
    I hugged my knees to my chest. “So, say I try cooperating with you. What are we talking about here? I mean, what do I have to do? Stop going to bars? Let you come everywhere with me?”
    “That’d be a good start.”
    I took a deep breath. “Okay. I can handle that.”
    “That’s not all, though.”
    “I know,” I said. “I have to stop doing coke.”
    He nodded. “You do.”
    “But it’s like addictive, and I don’t know if I can just stop.”
    “I’ll help you,” he said. “It’s not like heroin, you know. You’re not going to go through physical withdrawal or something.”
    “That’s true.” If I thought about it, I routinely went for days, even weeks, without doing blow. Sometimes I just couldn’t score it. I could probably lay off. It would be good for me. It mostly made me want to do it more anyway. I sometimes wasn’t sure if I liked coke, or if the effect of cocaine was simply to make me feel as if I wanted more. I thought that if I wanted it more, I must like it. But maybe it was only the drug screwing with my head. “Okay. Well, I’ll stop.