“Thanks,” I said, before glancing at his smug, self-satisfied expression. “For everything.”

“You’re welcome,” he said, his voice laced with obnoxious triumph. As expected. “Now, are you going to tell me how you really found the dog?”

I turned away from his stare. “What are you talking about?” I hoped he wouldn’t notice that I couldn’t look him in the eye.

“You were walking Mabel on a slip lead when I saw you. There’s no way she was wearing that, from the wounds on her neck. Where’d you get it?”

Being trapped, I did what any self-respecting liar would do. I changed the subject. My eyes fell on his clothes.

“Why do you always look like you just rolled out of bed?”

“Because usually I have.” And the way he raised his eyebrow at me made me blush.

“Classy,” I said.

Noah leaned back and laughed. The sound was raucous. I loved it immediately, then mentally flogged myself for the thought. But his eyes crinkled at the corners and his smile illuminated his entire face. The light changed, and Noah, still smiling, took his hands off the steering wheel and reached into his pocket, withdrawing the cigarettes. He drove with his knee as he tapped one out in his hand, flicked open a small silver lighter and lit up in one fluid movement.

I tried to ignore the way his lips curved around the cigarette, how he held it pinched between thumb and third finger, and drew it almost reverently to his mouth.

That mouth. Smoking was a bad habit, yes. But he looked so good doing it.

“I hate uncomfortable silences,” Noah said, interrupting my less-than-clean thoughts. He tilted his head back slightly and a few strands of his spiking, curling hair caught a shaft of sunlight that filtered through his car window. “They make me nervous,” he said.

That comment warranted an eye-roll. “I have a hard time believing anything makes you nervous.” The words rang true. It was impossible to imagine that Noah was anything but comfortable, all the time. And not just comfortable—bored. Bored. And gorgeous. And I was sitting next to him. Close.

My pulse raced to catch up with my thoughts. There was some villainy afoot, absolutely.

“It’s true,” he continued. “I totally freak out when people look at me, as well.”

“I call shenanigans,” I said, as the sounds of Miami floated in through the window.

“What?” Noah looked at me, all innocence.

“You’re not shy.”

“No?”

“No,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “And pretending to be makes you look like a jackass.”

Noah feigned offense. “You’ve wounded me to the core with your profane characterization.”

“Pass the tissues.”

Noah broke into an easy smile as the cars in front of us lurched forward. “All right. Maybe ‘shy’ isn’t the right word,” he said. “But I do get—anxious—when there are too many people around. I don’t really like attention.” He then studied me carefully. “A vestige of my dark and mysterious past.”

It was a struggle not to laugh in his face. “Really.”

He took another long drag on his cigarette. “No. I was just an awkward kid. I remember being, like, twelve or thirteen and all my friends had little girlfriends. And I’d go to sleep and feel like a loser, wishing that one day I could grow up and just be fit.”

“Fit?”

“Yeah. Fit. Hot. Anyway, I did.”

“Did what?”

“I woke up one morning, went to school, and the girls noticed me back. Rather unnerving, actually.”

His candor caught me a little off guard. I tried not to let it show. “Poor Noah,” I said, and sighed.

He smirked and stared straight ahead. “I figured out what to do with it eventually, but not until we moved here. Unfortunately.”

“I’m sure you worked it out just fine.”

He turned to me and arched an eyebrow. “The girls here are boring.”

And the arrogance was back. “We Americans are so uncouth,” I said.

“Not Americans. Just the girls here, at Croyden.”

I noticed then that we were back in the parking lot. And parked. How did that happen?

“Most of them, anyway,” Noah finished.

“You seem to be managing.”

“I was, but things are looking up this week in particular.”

So awful. I shook my head slowly, not even bothering to hide my grin.

“You’re not like other girls.”

I snorted. “Seriously?” And Jamie said he was smooth.

“Seriously,” he replied, missing my sarcasm. Or ignoring it. Noah took a final drag on his stub of a cigarette, breathed the smoke out of his flared nostrils and flicked the remains of the cancer stick out the window.

My mouth fell open. “Did I just see you litter?”

“I’m driving a hybrid. It cancels out.”

“You’re horrible,” I said, without conviction.

“I know,” Noah said, with it. He smiled, then reached over my lap to open my door, brushing my arm with his as he leaned across my body. He cracked my door open but didn’t move away. His face was inches from mine, and I could see hints of gold in his perpetual five o’ clock shadow. He smelled like sandalwood and ocean, but only faintly of smoke. My breath caught in my throat.

When my cell phone rang, I jumped so forcefully that my head hit the roof of Noah’s car. “Whatthef—!”

The phone continued to ring, ignorant of my pain. The lyrics of Tupac’s “Dear Mama” that Joseph had programmed for my ringtone indicated the culprit.

“I’m sorry, I have to—”

“Wait—” Noah started.

My heart galloped in my chest and only partly from surprise. Noah’s lips were inches away from my face, my phone was protesting in my hand, and I was in trouble.

15

I MUSTERED UP EVERY OUNCE OF FREE WILL I HAD and extracted myself from his car. I gave him a halfhearted wave as I shut the door behind me. I answered the phone.

“Hello?”

“Mara! Where are you?” My mother sounded frantic.

I turned the key in the ignition of Daniel’s car and glanced at the clock. I was seriously late. Not good.

“I’m driving home now.” My tires squealed as I reversed out of the spot, and almost hit a parked black Mercedes in the spot behind me.

“Where have you been?” she asked.

She was counting every nanosecond I hesitated, so I went with the truth. “I found a starving dog near the school and she was in really bad shape so I had to take her to the vet.” There.

There was silence on her end before she finally asked, “Where is it now?”

Some jerk honked behind me as I turned onto the expressway. “Where is what?”

“The dog, Mara.”

“Still at the vet.”

“How did you pay for it?”

“I didn’t—a classmate saw me and he took me to his mom, a vet, and she treated her for free.”

“That’s convenient,” she said.

There it was; that edge to her voice. I was in it, and deep. I didn’t respond.

“I’ll see you when you get home,” my mother said. Abruptly.

I was not looking forward to it, but I slammed on the gas at the first opportunity anyway. I dared the cops to pull me over, pushing ninety when I could. I wove in and out of lanes at every opportunity. I ignored the irritated honking. Miami was infecting me.

It wasn’t long before I pulled into the driveway at home. I crept into the house like a criminal, hoping to be able to sneak into my room without being seen, but my mother was perched on the arm of the sofa in the sunken living room. She’d been waiting for me. Neither of my brothers was within sight or hearing. Curse them.

“Let’s talk.” Her expression was unnaturally calm. I braced myself for the onslaught.

“You have to answer the phone when I call. Every time.”

“I didn’t realize it was you calling before. I didn’t recognize the number.”

“It’s my office number, Mara. I told you to program it in as soon as we moved, and left you a voice mail.”

“I didn’t have time to listen to it. Sorry.”

My mother leaned forward, and her eyes searched my face. “Is there really a dog?”