He actually almost smiles. He wants to smile.

I know why.

It’s her. If anyone could reach this kid, it’s her.

She reached me, after all.

“Have you seen her out here recently?”

He nods. “She went for a walk. She asked me to go but Mrs. Lawson told me not to go past this point and I didn’t want to get . . .”

“Punished?” I finish for him because I know exactly what he’s afraid of. Thankfully I put what he’s afraid of in the hospital.

He just nods and looks away again. My instinct is to nudge him lightly but I don’t because I know better. It took me years before I was okay with unexpected physical contact.

I glance over my shoulder and see Mrs. Lawson standing at her back patio door talking on the phone. I wave and she lifts a hand in response.

“For the record, Mrs. Lawson’s brand of punishment isn’t so bad,” I say instead. “She’d just make you let her cat tell you your future.”

One corner of his mouth perks up. “She already did. He’s over there.”

The darker of the two cats belonging to Dixie’s neighbor is hiding under a patio chair.

“I think my future was bad,” the kid next to me says. “Mrs. Lawson wouldn’t tell me what it said but she’s been on the phone crying for a long time.”

“Liam,” I hear Dixie say in my head. “His name is Liam.”

“Nah,” I say with a shrug. “Mrs. Lawson gets emotional sometimes. I wouldn’t worry about it, Liam.”

He angles his neck to face me and his eyebrows are raised. “How did you know my name?” His eyes are guarded, like this must be some sort of trick. I can already see him retreating.

“Miss Dixie told me,” I answer, hoping that calms him.

“She’s nice to me,” he says quietly.

“She’s a nice lady.”

“Is she yours?”

Huh. His question throws me and I’m left gaping stupidly for a few seconds.

Is Dixie Lark mine?

I scratch my chin, remembering I need to shave, and cross my ankles out in front of me.

“Miss Dixie is her own woman. She doesn’t belong to anyone but herself. But I hope, one day, that she will be with me because she chooses to. People can’t really belong to other people exactly.”

“Kids belong to parents,” he argues.

“Kind of,” I agree. “But not like possessions. Not like your baseball cards belong to you or your dog belongs to you. More like . . . you get . . .” I don’t know what word I’m looking for but I’m struggling to find it.

“Stuck with them?”

Christ this kid is beating what little unbattered fraction of a soul I have left to hell and back.

“No, Liam. Not stuck.” I watch his face to make sure I’m not upsetting him. “If the universe or the powers that be see fit to give a person a kid, they should consider themselves lucky. They should be the best parent that they can. They shouldn’t . . .”

Get high. Disappear. Let the kid starve half to death before bringing home three-day-old pizza and calling it dinner.

I close my eyes because now I’m upsetting my fucking self.

“ . . . mistreat them,” I finally bring myself to say.

“But sometimes they do,” he says quietly, somehow reading my mind. Do kids read minds? God, I hope not.

“Liam,” Mrs. Lawson calls from her porch. “Come back inside and eat something, please.”

“I gotta go.” He stands and his shirt rides up enough that I can see old scars down his spine. My rage flares and I regret for a moment that I didn’t go ahead and kill Carl Andrews and do this kid and the world a favor.

“Okay. Nice talking to you.”

He nods and then walks quickly and stiffly over to Mrs. Lawson.

I watch the blue finches come and go for a while, and wonder the entire time where my Bluebird went.

21 | Dixie

AFTER A WALK around the block, my head is slightly clearer. But so is my frustration.

Gavin is sitting out back on the bench when I return.

“So everything is my fault then? I went to college and all hell broke lose and it’s entirely my fault?” I demand in place of a greeting. I cross my arms over my chest as I approach and wait for him to say something that makes any of this better.

Gavin stands and paces back and forth for a minute before turning to face me.

“No. It was my fault. Because I fucking loved you, I fucking missed you, and I didn’t feel like it would do anyone any good for you to know that.” He runs both hands through his hair, leaving it sticking up wildly all over the place.

“You should’ve told me, Gav. But I should’ve told you, too. We’ve kept so much from each other and now it’s just—”

“Please do not say hopeless.” His pleading eyes meet mine and he shakes his head. “I don’t know what it is right now but I know it’s not hopeless.”

There is just so much. The drugs, the girls, the accident. And all of it concealed from me, hidden away as if it were possible for me to keep living in my safe little bubble.

I shake my head because it feels like a jumbled mess inside it. I can’t think straight, can’t organize my thoughts into a coherent stream that I’m capable of making sense of.

“I was sure you’d meet someone there, someone worthy of you. I looked at my life and saw how pathetic it was. I didn’t think I’d ever be capable of giving you what you deserved so I just . . . gave up. Not just on you or us but on myself, too. I let the temptations pull me under and it took nearly killing my best friend to make me realize how bad off I actually was.”

I can hear his words and I know that if I could let them in past the lies and the pain of being in the dark for so long, they would probably help somehow. But right now it’s just too much, it’s all too much.

Gavin isn’t much of a talker and for the first time ever, I want him to return to the broody, silent version of himself so I can try to figure out how to make what has happened okay. How to make peace with the past so that I can figure out whether we have a future.

I’m one second from covering my ears like a child to keep his words out when he delivers the crushing blow to my soul.

“Ashley helped me, she represented me when no one else would. She accepted what I could give and it sort of turned into a . . . thing, I guess. But after Austin, I ended it. I swear to God, I have not touched her since. But she’s still my attorney, she’s a pretty damn good one, and she knows my case and is doing her best to get my probation ended early so that I can be a part of Leaving Amarillo—and not the anchor that weighs the band down and keeps us from playing out-of-state gigs.” He swallows hard and stares at me with that look, that please-don’t-hate-me-I’m-only-a-clueless-guy look. I frown, trying to sort my feelings in my head before I open my mouth and say something I can’t take back. “Tell me what I can do, Bluebird. What I can say or do to make it better, to keep from hurting you. Please. Whatever you want or need, I will do. Name it.”

A desperate Gavin. This is a switch. Typically it was me doing the begging and pleading and trying to push him into recognizing what we had. But now the tables have turned and I don’t know what side either of us is really on.

“I don’t know,” I say softly. “I’m just . . . there’s so much I didn’t know and this other girl in your life that I can’t compete with and honestly, I don’t think I want to even—”

He cuts my sentence short by rushing forward and taking my hands in his. The contact assaults my exposed nerves. “I ended it with no room for doubt. I told her I would get the money I owed as soon as I could and I’ve been paying her weekly from my check. She still comes around every now and then, either because she’s lonely or bored, or hell if I know, but I told her in no uncertain terms that I don’t want that in my life anymore. I’m done with that kind of life—with temporary highs and empty relationships. With using sex as currency or as just a means to an end. I want this, what you and I have, what you and I could have if I stopped getting in my own way.”