Jake looked much too large for the little kitchen as he leaned against the counter and twiddled his keys in his hands.
“What the fuck just happened?” I asked. “You told Miss Thornton that you were my cousin and that I could stay with you?”
“Yes.” He smiled and moved over to the couch where he plopped down and put his feet up on the coffee table. His heavy boots thudded against the wood.
“Why?”
He pushed a stray hair behind his ear, shrugged his shoulders, looked me dead in the eye and said, “I don’t know.”
At that moment, it didn’t really matter why he had helped. All that mattered is that he’d saved me from foster care—or, more likely, he had saved me from prison.
“Thank you.” The words were hard for me to say. I hadn’t said them much in my life. “I don’t know why you did it, but I’m glad you did.” I pushed both straps of my bag over my shoulder and started for the door.
“Where are you going?” Jake asked. He stood up from the couch and blocked the door. He towered over me, his presence as intimidating as the bike he rode.
“I’m leaving.” I really didn’t want to have to remind him that his lie had helped me out of foster care, but it still left me homeless. I had to go back and see if I could salvage some of Nan’s stuff, to see if there was anything worth selling.
“Why are you leaving?”
I fidgeted with my hands and looked at the floor. “I gotta go figure some stuff out I guess.”
“Like what?”
“Well, what you told Miss Thornton will get her off my ass for a while, but I still have to figure where I’m going to live. I figure I can sell some of Nan’s stuff for a bus ticket to a place more inland, where the hotels are less expensive.” I hated saying that I had nowhere to go. It made it all even more real. Jake already knew all of it, between sleeping in the junkyard and seeing the state of Nan’s, but that didn’t make it any less embarrassing.
“Abby.” Jake reached out to grab my hand, but stopped himself. He pushed his hands into the front pockets of his jeans instead. “I want you to stay here. I meant it when I told her that.”
“Why? You don’t even know me.”
“You need a place to stay, and I have one. Problem solved as far as I’m concerned.”
“What do you…want from me?” I braced myself for some sort of perverted answer that would make me reach for my knife again.
“What’s going on in that head of yours?” He reached out and gently pulled my hood off my face, letting my hair fall around my shoulders.
My red face in full view.
“I don’t know anymore. It’s just that one minute I’m prepared to go to prison, and the next, I’m here in your apartment with you telling me I can stay with you.” I just shook my head. “It’s a little overwhelming.”
“Prison?” Jake asked. “I thought they wanted to take you to foster care?”
“And I told you I wasn’t going to go, no matter what.”
Jake looked at me with an understanding I’d never seen in anyone before.
“You sure you want me to stay?” I asked. “Knowing that I’m the type of person who was about to hurt someone else just to save herself?”
Jake took a deep breath. “Now more than ever.” He smiled. “And I just…” He hesitated. “I like the way you make the silence bearable.”
I knew instantly what he was talking about. I felt the same way.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll stay. But I’m going to sleep on the couch. I can’t let you give up your room for me.”
“No, you’re sleeping in my room.” He pointed to the door off the kitchen. He leaned in toward me, and my heart sped up. I braced myself for his touch. Instead, he leaned past me and flipped the switch behind my head, turning on the lamp next to the couch. “I’m sleeping there.”
“You can’t sleep on the couch while I take your bed. It’s not fair.” And it wasn’t. He was already doing too much for a girl he didn’t know.
“The couch pulls out, Abby, and it’s actually where I spend most nights anyway. I’ll be gone on a few trips over the next few months, so you’ll have the place to yourself for some of the time. Might as well get used to it being your room, anyway. Besides, I’m not giving you a choice in the matter.”
“What about rent?” I asked, “I can pay you—not much, but something, as soon as I can find a job.
“Rent is payable in ass and grass only, baby,” Jake answered. His eyes shone as he looked me up and down, biting his bottom lip between his teeth.
My mind told me to run, but my body wouldn’t budge.
After what seemed like forever, he laughed. “I’m fucking with you, Bee. The look on your face is fucking priceless, though.”