Ciar shifted abruptly, digging in his back pocket. "Mind if I light up?"

I shook my head as he pulled out a lighter and a hand-rolled joint.

"Thanks. Been a long day."

I wiggled my phone out of my jeans, scrolling through the call log.

"Whatchu doin' there, texting my brother?" Ciar asked. A wave of earthy smoke washed over me, mingling with the stinging scent of alcohol.

"Proving that I didn't call you," I shot back, ignoring the fact that the garage was at the top of my outgoing call history, sandwiched between three unanswered attempts to reach Mark below and two above.

"Yeah, yeah, give me that before you delete the evidence." He snatched the phone from me and stared at the screen for entirely too long. "Who's Mark?"

"Ex-husband." I elbowed him in the gut and reclaimed my phone, locking the screen with a click.

Ciar let out a low laugh. "Shit, Maisye. My brother whisks you off to P-town and you're back here drunk dialing your ex the next day?"

I didn't mention the post-sex conversation I'd had with Mark the day before. "I probably called him for the same reason I called you. He's a dickwad and he should know it."

No answer. Another puff of smoke blinded me.

"Must be a guy thing," I added viciously.

"Uh huh. What about Donovan? What's he, a shitstain? Dipshit? Asswagon?"

"Who's Valerie Kunath?" I asked in return.

"Kunath...." He scratched at the back of his head, joint held loosely in his other hand. "Aw jeez, I think they lived next door during our high school years? I don't remember a Valerie, though."

"It's her married name."

"Sorry, Flash. I'm not a phone book." He shot me a sideways glance. "Why are you asking me about the Kunaths?"

"No reason," I said quickly. "I just saw her in P-town. She looks a little bit like...like Tilda."

His eyebrows twitched. "You look a little bit like Tilda."

Don't remind me. Her name—her old nickname—sounded foreign falling from his lips, and it reminded me of the night we met.

"How did you know my name?"

He frowned.

"The night you came and towed my car from the gallery," I said. "How did you know who I was?"

"She told me."

My eyes followed every curve of his lips around the words, the smoke seeping out the cracks.

"She told me everything. How you never returned her calls or texts. I know it might be hard to believe, under all the tight skirts and lipstick and sleeping around, but she was lonely. Underneath it all, she just wanted a family."

A family. The old woman in P-town had said something about Tilda having a baby. If she really wanted a family, why did she kill herself just as it seemed she was building one?

"Wait." I sat up, narrowing my eyes at Ciar. "I never returned her calls? I called her for years with no answer. She ghosted me. I didn't even know where she lived until Boston P.D. called to tell me she drowned."

He shrugged. "I only know what I heard, and I knew her a lot better than I know you."

"She never told Donovan about me."

He took a long drag of his blunt and let it out slowly. "Doesn't surprise me."

"Why?"

"Do you ever stop prying?"

I fiddled with the label on the wine bottle, chastised. I wasn't about to share my whole life with him; why should I expect him to share his with me?

"Did she have a death wish?" I asked, my voice so small that I wasn't even sure he heard me.

For a long time we just breathed, listening to the sounds of the city below and staring at the skyscrapers poking out above the mid-rise complexes in the distance.

"No," he finally said. "That's what doesn't make sense. She wasn't tame. She was reckless. She did crazy stuff. But she wasn't like you."

I felt his eyes on me, and I bit the inside of my cheek as I stared at the wooden floor.

"She did it to live. Not because she wanted to die."

"Okay." I crossed my legs and shifted so that my shoulder leaned against the railing. "Let's get one thing straight. I don't want to die. Not anymore. I just don't care if it happens."

Hypocrite, I thought. Why do you care so much that someone's stalking you then?

Because it was out of my control, like everything else in my life, beginning with my own parents' deaths. Getting bumped from foster home to foster home. Tilda's death, Mark's departure. The only time I'd had full control at my fingertips was the night I'd stood on the Golden Gate Bridge with the power to end it all.

Ciar still watched me with questions in his eyes, but I stayed silent. No way would he understand all that—nor did he need to know.

"What did my brother do to you?" he asked softly.

"Nothing," I whispered. It was true. He hadn't done anything to me.

Unless he'd really killed Tilda. I threw a cautious glance at Ciar. Did he know something the FBI didn't? Maybe my first instinct had been right, and Clarissa was wrong to ignore Donovan's brother. Only maybe it wasn't because he'd done it, but because he knew who had.

Ciar finally nodded once to himself and reached for the wine. My eyes followed the joint.

"You take a little, you ought to give a little, yeah?" I commented.

He threw his head back and cackled. "I don't share."

I rolled my eyes and started to turn away.

He sighed, readjusted himself, and then offered a compromise. "Shotgun?"

I eyed the joint, then nodded. This city had frayed my nerves for weeks. I needed a break, and I'd do anything for it right now.

"Come here." He put the blunt to his lips and sucked in a breath, then leaned toward me. For half a second, I hesitated. How close did he want me to come?

He was still six inches away when the first tendrils of smoke escaped his mouth, twirling aimlessly through the air between us. I parted my mouth obediently, closing my eyes as I inhaled and tried not to wrinkle my nose. I'd never been a fan of the smell, only the effects.

Then something brushed my lips. Something solid and warm and soft and definitely not smoke. Half of me wanted to pull away, but the other half roared to life like a bonfire doused in kerosene. I recognized that part—it was her, rising up to reclaim the life I'd stolen from her—but before I could warn him who I was becoming, she took over.

My hand snaked around the back of his neck, anchoring him to me. My nose pressed against his. On a whim, I sank my teeth gently into his bottom lip.

His fingers wove themselves into my hair, tugging my head back as he shifted closer. His bulk, toned from days of heavy lifting in the garage, dwarfed me. I shrank against him, reveling in the rough drag of every crack in his lips. Tilda had known this kiss. She rattled at the doors of her prison, at the confines of my body, winding her way up my spine toward my mind.

And then Ciar murmured the one thing that could have brought me back.

"Maisye."

I jerked back, eyes wide. He looked just as frightened as I felt, his chest heaving and his lips parted.

The worst part? The only buzz I felt came from the alcohol.

I forced a laugh as I scooted several feet away from him. "I forgot how useless shotguns were."

He shrugged, half a smile dimpling his right cheek. "Depends how well they're given."

"Well you're not real good at it." My voice shook, unable to overcome the pounding of my heart against my ribcage.

"Give you a couple more, eventually you'll get a buzz." He took another long draw, and I almost wished he'd lean over and do it again.

"Is that your grand plan to kiss me some more?"

He's Donovan's brother, I snapped at myself. And yet half of me wanted him to say yes.

He snorted. A forceful snort with years of derision packed behind it. Smoke billowed out his nostrils in one short burst. "Don't flatter yourself, Flash. That wasn't a kiss, it was technique."

"Right," I said, trying to hide my hurt behind sarcasm.

"You're the one who tried to eat my face off."

My cheeks flamed as I looked away. I hated the tears pricking to life at the corners of my eyes, and I hated the shame coiling in my gut like a snake. But most of all, I hated that Ciar had the power to make me feel this way.

I needed to get myself under control. I couldn't let Tilda consume me again and end up back in a psych ward.

When I heard him chuckling to himself again, I let my eyes cut to him. Not an ounce of tension in his body. I didn't know if it was the weed or if he genuinely didn't care, but it opened the wound just a little further.

I was used to rejection. Too used to it, and each person who'd walked away—parents, foster parents, boyfriends and girlfriends and flings and Mark and now Tilda—had taken a piece of me with them. And now, with nothing left to take, someone was bound to come away with me, raw and unadulterated and fucked up beyond belief.

I hoped for Ciar's sake that it wasn't him.

As if he heard my thoughts, he stood. "I should go," he said. "But if you want, I'll swing by tomorrow. There's something I think you should see."

Because I'd never been able to tell what was good for me, I nodded.