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hers.
    “Dammit, Millie, you had no business keeping that from me!”
    I don’t hear an answer, which means the phone must be working.
    Mom shouts, “I’m talking about Rinn, not me. You know what I’ve been through with her! Do you have any idea what this might
do
to her?”
    Crap, crap. And triple crap.
    Nate, riveted, yelps in surprise when I almost knock him off the porch. “Go.
Go!
”
    Reluctantly, he follows me to the sidewalk. It’s too late, of course. He heard enough. “I’m guessin’ there’s more to you than meets the eye,” he ventures.
    “I’d say you guessed right.” No point in denying it.
    “Care to elucidate?”
    I force a smile. “That’s a mighty big word coming from you, farmer boy.”
    “Yup, four whole syllables. I amaze myself.”
    I fling down my skirt as a gust of wind shoots under my hem. It’s terrible to keep such desperate secrets inside you. Worse, how long can these secrets stay secret in a town thesize of a San Diego mall? Millie probably knows every sordid detail. It’s just a matter of time before she opens her mouth. She’ll tell Tasha first, and then Tasha will blab it, and so on and so on.
    Unless people already know.
That’s
occurred to me, too.
    I like Nate. I’d like to be able to trust him.
    “I’ll tell you about me,” I bargain at last, “but only if you tell me what
you
know first. No fudging it.”
    “Well.” Nate fingers his chin. “I didn’t hear all that much.”
    I wait.
    “Um, I know your mom and dad are separated and that’s why you moved here.”
    “And?”
    “And nothing. That’s it.”
    I blow out a sigh of relief.
    “You want to talk about it?” he asks.
    No, yes, no, maybe.
    “My dad hates me,” I say softly.
    Just as expected, he argues, “Parents don’t hate their kids.”
    “That’s what you think. You don’t know Frank.”
Or what I did to him.
    “You call your dad Frank?”
    “He’s my stepdad.”
    “Even so. I mean, c’mon, Rinn. How could he hate
you
?”
    The way Nate says “you” melts the core of my heart. “You called it,” I say weakly. “I’m a pain in the ass, remember?”
    Mom’s distant shrill reaches us again. Nate takes my hand and leads me across the street, the imprint of his fingers warming me. “You want to come in?” he asks.
    “I don’t know. Am I allowed?”
    “Why not?”
    Because your dad’s car isn’t here? And my mom’s got a suspicious mind?
“Okay.”
    Nate’s house is orderly, and masculine to the hilt. A set of drums takes up the dining room instead of a table. “Those yours?”
    “Yep. I’m in the orchestra. Marching band, too. You’re taking chorus, right? Guess we’ll be seeing each other at rehearsals.”
    I point to the mangy deer head displayed over the fireplace. “That is
the
most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen.”
    “I shot it myself.”
    “Are you bragging or confessing?”
    “Uh, I’ll take the Fifth on that one.”
    On the mantel I see a photo of a woman holding a baby on her lap. The baby looks like Nate right down to the spiky hair. “Your mom? Where is she?” Not hanging out in
this
macho abode.
    “New York. My dad met her in college. They moved back here when I was born, but my mom hated it. She left right after that picture was taken. Now she’s remarried, has a whole ’nother family and everything.”
    “You ever see her?”
    “Nope,” he says distantly. I finger the picture frame, hating the woman who dumped baby Nate, and set it back on the mantel when Nate changes the subject. “So why are you such a pain in the ass that they threw you out of California?” Unexpectedly, he lifts the hair off my neck. “Is it because of this?”
    “Don’t.” I push him away and smooth my hair back down.
    “Are you a cutter, Rinn?” he asks gently.
    “No.
God
, no. I only did it that one time.”
    “Why?”
    I’m not sure I want to tell him. Then again, shouldn’t I be the one to lay it all out, before he finds out from, say, Millie? Or