Adulthood seemed to beckon Harley with open arms that day. After she had cried until her eyes were dry, and her pillow couldn't hold in any more of her screams, an overwhelming sense of calm settled over her, wrapped her in a soft, warm cocoon. She splashed her face with cold water in the bathroom—people were always doing that in the movies, and she thought it looked refreshing—and went back to her room to pace the floor and give herself a pep talk.

She didn't need her father. She had gone this long without him, hadn't she?

And yet, she had spent so many years desperate for his approval, for his love and admiration, crawling after them on hands and knees, like a dog chasing a bone on a string, only the string kept tugging, pulling the bone just out of reach every time she got close. That was her father. Tugging her strings, playing them just right, like an instrument, knowing all of her chords. He'd mastered them.

She had been so naïve and foolish, star-wishing for a kind of love that he could not give. So reckless, charging headfirst towards an unobtainable goal, uncaring of how often she fell and scraped the outside of her heartskin, or was pushed away and left only with the remnants of a purpled and bruised memory.

Well, she'd be damned if she ever went and chased after the approval and love of someone who didn't love her back, who never had loved her to begin with. It wasn't worth the energy, the heartache.

She was determined to never see him again.

You deserve better, Harls. She was sitting in front of her vanity now, staring at herself in the mirror. You. Deserve. Better.

She gazed at her appearance, at her new, hardened eyes. She felt older, maybe even wiser, somehow, and infinitely more mature. Something had changed in her when Nick had said goodbye. Some sort of thread holding them together had snapped. Or maybe it was something else, maybe a door closing on that stage in Harley's life with a final, resounding bang. In her mind she saw herself holding the key and tossing it behind her with a flourish and a wiping of her hands, as if to rid herself of the dirt and grime that carrying that key for some many years had stained her palms with. She was Pontius Pilate, washing her hands in front of an invisible crowd, innocent of her father's infidelities and transgressions.

There was a picture of her father squished in between the trophies and certificates that lined the shelf above her vanity. Harley stood on her tip-toes and plucked it from its perch. The glass plating was veiled in a thick layer of dust, and she wiped it away with the pad of her thumb to reveal the colors beneath. Inside the baby pink frame was a photo that had been taken at Harley's first ever ballet performance, when she was just three years old. Her father was crouched on the ground, smiling, and Harley stood proudly in the crux of his thighs with a half-toothed grin, baring her trophy with outstretched arms for the camera to capture in all its faux-gold, sparkly glory. It was one of the few photos she actually had of her and her father together. Sharon had never fawned over family photos, not like Guy's family, who had professional family portraits done at the mall every Christmas, and candid photos from family outings and camping trips and baseball games and vacations lining every hallway in their house and dotted all over the fridge. Harley couldn't even remember the last time the Quinzels had all posed together for a picture.

For a split second, there existed a moment where Harley felt white-hot with rage and wanted nothing more than to hurl the photo into her trash bin, frame and all—but she was stopped by the tender and gentle hands of sentimentality. Those strings again. She opened one of the lower drawers of her vanity and shoved it in the back and out of sight. Face down. She heard the glass crack but didn't care; the drawer slammed shut with enough force make the nail polish bottles lined in front of her mirror tremble, as if startled by this newfound wrath. Her strength.

Later that evening when she was called down to dinner, she descended the staircase with her shoulders pushed back and her features schooled into an expression of calm but fierce serenity, if there ever were such a thing. It was the sort of expression that she hoped said, "I am collected, but cross me and I will snap your neck off." It made her feel powerful.

Of course, all of this lasted up until the point where Harley was tucking herself into bed, the lights off. Her pillow was too lumpy and her sheets were cold and the world outside her window was quiet and still. She burrowed deeper into her covers and tried not to miss her dad, or think too hard about what he was doing now, like kissing Donna or maybe tucking her kids into bed, even though he'd never once done such a thing for her. She didn't even know if Donna had kids. Maybe it was better not to know. It was better not to wonder if he was planting a tender kiss on another daughter's forehead, if he was smoothing out the wrinkles in her bedspread as he pulled them up to her chin, if he was whispering goodnight as he turned off the light, gently closed the door.

Harley turned onto her side and stared out the window where the pale beams from the moon had tangled in the gnarled tree branches. She'd be lying if she said she didn't miss him, much as she hated herself for feeling that way. How could it be possible to love someone that you hated? How could it be possible to sing poetry and yet breathe dragon-fire all in the same breath?

The New Year came with little fanfare. She was able to spend it with Guy and his family in front of the TV in the comfort of their living room to watch Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve special. Guy's parents were squeezed close together on the recliner, with his mom resting comfortably in her husband's lap, while Harley and Guy had the whole couch to themselves. Peter had gone back to school and was out celebrating with friends.

The Christmas tree was still lit up in the corner, and the house smelt of warm black coffee and the leftover chocolate Bundt cake still lazing on the kitchen counter, half of it already gone. Their empty plates and forks were clustered in an uneven stack on the coffee table in front of Harley and Guy.

With ten seconds left until the New Year, the four of them counted down the seconds until the big moment, erupting into loud cheers along with the rest of New York as the giant, coruscating silver ball dropped in Times Square. Guy's parents shared a sweet kiss, and when Harley looked back over at Guy and suggestively wiggled her eyebrows—as if the two of them should also lock lips—he turned beet red and forced out a laugh as Harley laughed too.

Guy's dad walked her the short distance home shortly after 12:30, with Guy in tow. The moon was bright that night as the three of them shuffled through the melted slush on the sidewalk and crossed the street. Harley could smell the leftover smoke from the neighbor's firecrackers, saw it sifting through the trees like some shapeless ghost. Guy was feeling particularly chatty and energized from the festivities, and pointed out the white strobe lights flashing in the sky from the city.

"Bet they had quite the party," Guy's dad said over the faraway pops and crackles of lingering fireworks.

At the end of her driveway, they both wished Harley a 'Happy New Year', and she waved to them from the porch and did the same.

Inside, the house was gloomy and cold—a stark contrast to the warmth and cheeriness of Guy's home, a warmth that Harley had felt seep into her core. Surprising how quickly it could vanish, like that moment right after blowing out a birthday cake, when the applause has tapered off and someone hasn't flicked the lights back on yet, and you're left with the snakey, white ribbons of candle smoke. Lately when she went to Guy's house, she found herself not wanting to leave. The thought of going home to her empty house where she'd spend hours alone with no one to talk to was depressing. Wasn't home supposed to be the one place you couldn't wait to come back to at the end of a long day? Wasn't is supposed to bring you comfort, make you feel safe? Happy?

Instead it made her feel sick to her stomach. Home only served to remind her of how much things had changed, how her parents' marriage had dissolved into a pile of steaming crap, and how she had been living under the illusion of the worst lie ever told, the lie that her parents had loved each other, that they had loved her….

I'm practically raising this—this hell child by myself!

She closed the front door with a soft click, further solidifying the darkness. She sighed and unzipped her jacket, hanging it up in the hall closet before kicking off her boots. Her mother would be annoyed that she didn't leave her boots in the garage like she was supposed to, and that there'd be a melted pile of mud and slush on the floor when she woke in the morning, but Harley didn't care.

She crept up the stairs slowly, where they creaked in all the familiar places. At the top, she looked left and noticed Jack's door was closed. She wondered if he was home; it was hard to tell these days. Even when he was home, he went unnoticed, silent as a wraith. He didn't listen to music. He didn't talk on the phone. The only signs of him at all were the occasional empty cereal bowls left in the kitchen sink, turned over on their sides, like beached mammals stranded on their backs in the sand. Sometimes the bathroom tub would still be wet and the mirror fogged with steam from when he had last showered, indicating she had missed him only by minutes. Other times, she thought she could smell him in her room, on her pillowcase. She noticed this most after a long day at school, or after gymnastics practice, when she would open her door and dump her duffel on the floor, shimmy out of her track suit and leotard, undo her ponytail, flop down on her bed in a paradigm of exhaustion and achy muscles. She smelled him, then. She thought little of it, chalking it up to the fact that his cologne had probably drifted in from beneath her door. He wore some God-awful musky body spray—probably to hide the fact that he'd recently started smoking. Harley knew this because she seen the cigarette butts in the driveway, and the pack of crumpled up Camel's in the trash bin in front of the garage, the bin which Jack dutifully rolled to the end of the driveway every Tuesday morning.

On the right, Sharon's door was ajar, and Harley tip-toed towards it, poking her head inside. Her mother was asleep on her usual side of the bed, even though she could have slept anywhere she wanted now that she didn't have to share. There was a silk, eggshell blue sleeping mask over her eyes, and her hair was bunched at the crown where the strap dug into the sides of her head. The moonlight poured pale beams onto the carpet and over the gray bedsheets, one stripe falling across her mouth. Harley thought about the way Guy's parents had tenderly kissed at midnight, soft and chaste, and the way they had been snuggled together on the recliner, their legs tangled, his hand curled around her waist. The crinkles around her eyes when she smiled at something he said. They'd looked so happy together.

Harley couldn't remember the last time she'd seen her parents hug, let alone share a kiss. She wondered if she'd ever seen them kiss like that. Kiss like they meant it.

She went to bed that night thinking that nothing would ever be the same, and that maybe that was okay. It had to be okay. She couldn't allow herself to cling to the past, couldn't allow herself to become emotionally entangled in a downward spiral of toxic thoughts over something that could not be undone.

It was sink or swim, and she wanted nothing more than to breach the surface of the dark, sawtooth waves holding her under and to breathe freely again, to find her footing. She wanted to find that place where salted waves wouldn't infiltrate her lungs with every breath, and beneath her there was solid land to rest her tired legs on. Maybe the new year would bring that.

Winter break could not have ended soon enough. Harley was more than ready to throw herself back into gymnastics and school—which is exactly what she did—and for three months, it was fine—painless, even. It was easier than she thought it would be to shut out all thoughts relating to her father and her parent's newly-crumbled marriage, like the leftover garbage and rubble from some corner-store family business that nobody really liked, that wasn't even very pretty before it was torn to the ground.

Well, maybe "newly" crumbled married wasn't the right term for it since they'd been keeping their separation a secret for two years. But that was just semantics, right?

Harley and Jack never talked about it. She knew that Jack couldn't have cared less about the whole ordeal, and while she also suspected that he had known about it for much longer than she had, she couldn't bring herself to ask, mostly because she was too scared to know the truth. She didn't want a reason to be angry with him—for knowing and not telling her—particularly because they saw less and less of each other these days, but also because Jack's short temper had reached startling new lows—it didn't take much to set him off, and she didn't want to feed him any new ammunition.

The two of them had grown farther apart than she had thought possible. And it wasn't a gradual thing, but sudden, his departure from her life hard and fast, leaving her grasping at thin air. She felt as if the rug had been ripped out from underneath of her. All the warm summers they had spent together, happy and playful, or all their study sessions, all the practices and competitions he had attended, watching from the bleachers, tracking her every moment on the floor, never clapping, but smiling with his eyes, almost proud... how warm she'd felt in those moments, how full. How hungry and desperate she'd been for his dark eyes on her, craving the high of it, drunk on having his undivided attention. It all felt so distant and far now, light-years away. She saw their time together in flashes of light, as if refracted on the wall from the broken glass shards of mirror, or some patchy dream she could only just barely grasp the edges of. She wanted to be angry with him for alienating her so suddenly—but she missed him, and that blanketed her anger so that it was only a dull, hollow ache, barely perceptible in the back of her mind.

She didn't know why he had become so withdrawn and isolated, didn't know what had been the catalyst for this sudden change in behavior, why he had stopped talking to her, why he was never around, why he had started smoking, working more, why he went out of his way to avoid her. They were strangers now, and it mystified her. It hurt her.

He hurt her.

In the quiet moments, usually at night, tucked beneath her sheets, when the lights were off and she could hear the quiet hum of the refrigerator from downstairs, and the paper mobile she'd made in the second grade cast elongated shadows against the wall, she found herself replaying their last conversation, trying to decipher if perhaps she'd missed some non-verbal cue, trying to remember the look on his face, some flicker of his eyes, a minute reaction she may have missed. She came up empty-handed every time.

It wasn't a night much different from many others they had shared. He had picked her up from gymnastics practice, as he sometimes did if he was around. He drove now, had bought his own car, a beat-up Saab with rusted rims and a really bad paint job. He'd taken her to a little corner gas station where you could get a large Styrofoam cup of coffee or hot cocoa for seventy-eight cents. Harley got hot chocolate and asked for "lots and lots" of whipped cream. The guy behind the counter—some thin, crater-faced kid with greasy brown hair and dark stains on his apron—was happy to oblige, chatting her up while he fixed her drink, asking what school she went to and telling her about some party she should come to on Friday. Harley was still wearing her leotard, but had her track pants on and her matching jacket unzipped. She was unaware of the kid staring at the black, sheer, lightning bolt-shaped panel between the valley of her breasts, and she talked animatedly, obliviously, even as she sensed how annoyed Jack was next to her, could practically hear his eye-roll in the way he slammed his door shut when they got back in the car, the way his black coffee splashed over the rim when he put it in the cup holder.

He drove them to the skate park they liked to frequent in the summer when they were bored and wanted to get out of the house. Harley liked watching the cluster of teenagers with their helmets and kneepads and skateboards, talking and passing joints on the ledge of the half-pipe before dropping in, rolling fast down the pipe on their boards and coming up the other side and pulling a tail stall. She liked especially when they'd grab the edge of their board to spin in midair, their black, busted helmets catching the sherbet orange light of the streetlamps and gleaming like planetary orbs, momentarily caught in some fissure in space before they came down hard on the flat of the half-pipe. Crash. Burn. Harley could watch them for hours. There was a certain grace and finesse to be found in it all, not unlike in ballet, or gymnastics. The way you had to control your body, balance it, mold it so it moved with the board, and not against it. It left her rapt. She wanted to voice these thoughts to Jack, but couldn't quite figure out how to put them all into words. The sentiment fell flat on her tongue every time she tried, dissolving into nothing.

Jack parked the car near the edge of the park, where they were tucked underneath the dark shade of a line of pine trees, but still had a clear shot of the half-pipe. Harley watched three boys huddled close together near the top, laughing loudly, clutching their boards with fingerless gloves, passing a joint. She could see their breath hang in the air when they spoke, clinging to the back of the freezing cold.

Jack turned the key so the engine was off but they could still listen to the radio, some Smashing Pumpkins song. She knew because this was one of the bands that Peter liked.

Harley took a sip of her cocoa and used her tongue to mold the whipped cream to the shape of her lips.

"How do you like my lipstick?" she asked with a husky, feminine drawl, some poised 50s film star, Lauren Bacall, maybe, pursing her lips, batting her eyelashes lowering her lids, tacky with dollar-store glitter.

Instead of the usual "knock it off" and joking shove of her shoulder, Jack sat back in his seat. Didn't say anything. Harley held her pose but peeked one eye open to see if he was looking. He wasn't.

She sighed in exasperation and placed her cocoa in the cup holder, pulling her jacket tighter around her middle. The car had only been off for a few moments, but already the outside January chill was seeping in.

She turned in her seat when she heard the sound of a metal click. Once. Twice. Jack cradling his cigarette lighter, a two-dollar plastic BIC lighter he'd nicked from the convenience store. She watched the flames lick the white tip of his cigarette, catching, and then the yellow glow pulsing between the cracks in his cupped hands. She didn't bother to mask her disgust, her nose crinkling when he let out a long exhale, smoke clouding his face. Harley waved her arms in annoyance to make it all disappear.

"Ugh," she groaned. "Why are you doing that? Mom's going to kill you if you come home smelling like a dive bar," she said, tossing her ponytail behind her shoulder with the surety of someone who knows what they're talking about, lifting a haughty chin, trying to sound much older than she was.

That made Jack crack a smile, but it was heavy, and didn't reach his eyes. He turned towards her, his lips curling over the letter 'O' as he blew a ring of smoke in her direction. "Do you even know what a dive bar is, little girl?"

She narrowed her eyes and pouted, folding her arms across her chest and turning away from him. "I hate when you call me that." She waited a moment before peeking at him from over her shoulder, where he was staring at her, his eyes unusually dark, somber. "What's so great about smoking anyway?"

It was a while before Jack replied, taking his time with a few more slow drags, as his smoke curled and slid around the insides of the car. "It takes the edge off," he said.

Harley stared at the red hot point of the cigarette, tracking it as Jack loosely cradled it between his long fingers. That point, like the single glowing eye of some monster straight from one of her worst dreams. "The edge off of what?"

Jack smirked in lieu of a reply, like she was stupid for not knowing, but there was no real heat to it, no bite, and Harley nearly missed the way his fingers trembled when he brought the cigarette to his lips to take another drag. It's just cold out, she thought, wondering why he'd want to come here, of all places, instead of somewhere warmer.

Phil Collins was on the radio now, singing In the Air Tonight, and it made Harley feel sad all the sudden, though she didn't know why. She picked up her cocoa and held it with both hands, letting the cup burn her palms, thinking that it felt sort of good as she stared at the skateboarders through the windshield, watching them laugh and shout obscenities at each other, watching one of them fall flat on their ass on a trick gone bad.

From the corner of her eye, she could feel Jack's gaze on her, and never before had it felt so heavy, almost unwelcome in its intensity. She turned her head to look at him. "What?" she snapped.

Jack exhaled, waited for the smoke to clear before he spoke, slow, careful. "You know the guy at the gas station just wanted to fuck you, don't you?"

Harley flushed almost instantly, felt her face turn to fire. For all the time they had spent together, Jack had never said the word "fuck," not like that, not in relation to actual fucking.

She wanted to turn away, look out the window, get out of the car, run down the street, get lost among the pines, hide in the dark until her face stopped burning—but there was nowhere to turn to escape those eyes, that stare.

"How would you know?" she squeaked, hating how high and girlish her voice sounded.

Jack's mood changed in an instant, his eyebrows pushed together in anger. "Because you're so fucking oblivious, Harley!" he shouted, startling her with his intensity, the spittle flying from his mouth. "You think everyone just wants to be your friend and has good intentions but they don't!" He seemed to gain more confidence from the further back she drew in her seat, and he leaned in close, over the center console, to reach her. "No one has good intentions, Harley. No one."

Finished, he sat back in his seat, seeming to deflate. She watched him shrink in on himself, his shoulders hunched as he drew his cigarette to his lips with trembling fingers. The slow, breathless way he took a drag, holding in all the smoke until the last possible second, until he had to let it out, plumes of smoke escaping from his flared nostrils like smoke from the oversized, tunneled nares of a dragon.

Harley stared at him, speechless. Afraid. He'd never yelled at her like that before. Not like that.

"What about you?" she heard herself asking, her voice a mere squeak, barely above a whisper.

"Especially me." His voice quivered with this admission. He turned to face her, his gaze dropping from her eyes to her mouth, and back up again, the light from the streetlamps catching in the sunken hollows of his cheeks, highlighting for the first time how sharp his face had become. Had it always been like that? "Fuck," he breathed, "especially me." He looked away, rubbed his eye with his fist, like it itched, and Harley tried to search his expression, the desperation there, the disgust, wondering what it all meant, what he was trying to say.

She put her cocoa in the cup holder, feeling stupid for clutching it the way she was even though it was keeping her hands warm. She wanted to reach out and touch him. Lay a comforting hand on his shoulder, his arm. Tell him it was all going to be okay. The world wasn't really all that bad. Things would work out. But the sentiments felt fake. Contrived.

"It's getting kinda cold," she heard herself saying instead, "I think maybe we should—"

"Harley," he said, too quickly, cutting her off, staring at her with something new in his eyes. Something quaky and gelatinous, like fear. "I—I did something," he said, swallowing hard, searching her eyes as if he might find a lifeline in there, as if only she could be capable of saving him. His mouth opened, then closed, and opened again, like he could see himself saying the words, he just couldn't make himself say them aloud. "I think that I—"

He was interrupted by a series of loud rapping on the driver's side window. The noise startled them both, but especially Jack, who jumped so high his head nearly hit the roof of the car.

Harley squinted and held up an arm to shield herself against the onslaught of light—a flashlight, she realized—pointed directly at them. She caught the gleam of the GCPD insignia on a hat, and with a sinking feeling in her gut, realized it was a cop. Jack was quick to reach for the lever on the door and manually roll down the window.

"Can I help you, officer?" Jack asked, surprising Harley with the shift in his behavior, the cool, collected tone, like nothing was wrong and he hadn't just been on the brink of having some kind of mental breakdown.

The officer—Krazinski, she saw from the brass, rectangular name plate perched above his breast—leaned a forearm across the top of the door, bending down to peer inside the car, carefully eyeing Jack before letting his gaze slide to Harley in the passenger seat.

"Evening," he said, casual-as-you-please. "Little late to be out, don't you think?"

Harley looked behind her, realizing the skateboarders were gone. When had they left?

"We were just leaving." Jack moved to turn the keys in the ignition, but not before the officer stretched his arm across the steering wheel, blocking Jack. He reached in further to take the keys out of the ignition, smiling a little as they clanged in his loose fist.

"Not so fast there, son. Let's chat for a minute." He eyed Jack dangerously, testing him, daring him to talk back, to give him a reason to handcuff him and cart his sorry ass back to his cruiser and throw him in the backseat.

Jack's jaw was clenched so tight it looked almost painful. "What do you want to talk about—sir?"

The officer's eyes slid to Harley again, and she wondered why he kept looking at her like that, and why he kept looking at Jack as if he were about to rip him a new one.

The officer ignored Jack's question in favor of nodding to Harley. "How old are you, sweetheart?"

Harley swallowed, not sure why she was so nervous when they hadn't done anything wrong. "Twelve," she squeaked, then quickly added, "but I'll be thirteen in August!"

"Big milestone," the cop said. "Thirteen." He looked at Jack pointedly, and Jack stared at him, not backing down.

Harley could tell the cop was growing annoyed, but couldn't understand why. He turned back towards her again, looking her up and down before settling on her face.

"This your boyfriend, sweetheart? He tell you not to tell anybody?"

Harley felt the blood rushing to her face, hoped the darkness would hide her burning skin. She felt like she'd been hit in the face with a hotplate. She drew back in surprise.

"What?" she gasped. "Ewe, no! He's my brother!" She didn't know why she blushed. It was a simple question, and one that required an even simpler answer—"no"—but the implication was almost to taboo to think about. Forbidden. She was reminded of her eighth birthday party, sitting out on the green lawn, under a yellow sun and a blue sky streaked with razor-thin clouds, and Sarah asking if she thought Jack was "hot," and then following that, the immediate round of "Ewe!" and the disgusted, horrified indignation of, that's her brother!. But he wasn't really, was he? Jack felt as much like a brother as her dad felt like her father: that is, not at all. Still, the idea of them being something more than what they legally were was not an entirely foreign concept to her. She wondered about the way he looked at her sometimes. And sometimes when he talked to her she found herself staring at his mouth, the shape of it, the wetness of it, wondered what it would feel like to have it pressed against hers. What it would feel like to be the object of his affection. His attention. His desire. To be the sole focus of all that energy, all his pent-up feelings and thoughts, to have that unique privilege of being the one he came to first, the person he poured his deepest thoughts into, how willingly she'd drink them all up, like someone lost for days in the desert, desperate for even just one drop. To be the one he told his secrets to, to know exactly what he was thinking at any given time if she were to just ask; it could be that simple, that easy. To be the object of his fantasies, the shameful pleasure in knowing he would think about the ways he wanted to touch her, the things he wanted to do. It made her warm in a place she'd never felt warm before, and that too felt sinful. She was conscious of this warmth, a warmth so perverse it had no reservations as to how far it spread, how wide a circumference it took—like a tractor trailer making a U-turn, the lack of grace in its embarrassingly wide berth—and the way it made itself known all over her hot face. This embarrassed her—the defiant flamboyancy of it all—and she flushed even further.

Jack turned away from the cop, staring over the steering wheel with a hard, blank expression, his lips drawn into a narrow line. She thought she saw the corner of his mouth twitch, a telltale sign he was annoyed and about to snap.

The cop seemed doubtful of Harley's response, but surprised, too.

"Can I have my keys back now?" Jack said, still staring straight ahead. "Have to get her back home. It's a school night." He did look at the officer then, daring him to say something else, to refuse his request.

"Yes," the officer said. "Yes, it is." He paused a moment before tossing the keys in Jack's lap, where they landed with a metallic cling. Stood up straight. "Go on, son. Put them in. I'll escort you both home. Make sure you make it back safe and sound." Jack didn't say anything. The officer looked at Harley, tipped his hat at her. "Ma'am," he said.

Harley waited to speak until she could no longer hear the gravel crunching beneath his shoes as he walked back to his car, heard the door shut, and the engine start.

"Jeez!" she breathed. "What was that all about?" she asked, chuckling a little, still feeling a touch anxious and pent-up from the encounter. "Cops are so creepy!"

Jack didn't say anything. She watched him put the keys in the ignition and start the car. Watched him put it in reverse, then drive.

Gravel crunched beneath the tires, and then there was the smooth, reassuring roll of asphalt beneath them, stretching on and on, like a long, black tongue, and the yellow, reflective paint separating one side of the road from the other, glittering in the dark at intervals, like winking diamonds caught in the middle of the road. The moon chased them like this, and normally Harley would have leaned forward over the dashboard to follow it with her eyes, but she was too preoccupied making sure they were being followed by Krazinski.

There was an audible ripple in the pavement as they entered the interstate. It jostled Jack's coffee, still in the cup holder, as black liquid sloshed over the rim.

Gotham, in all its grim, terrible beauty, sped by in a blur and twinkle of gold and black, and there was something pulse-like in the passing lights, like they had a beat of their own, like the city was this living, breathing thing, a corpuscle thrumming with energy, matter, light. On any other night, she might marvel over its constituents, the halves that formed the whole, but she was too busy twisting around in her seat to see if the cop was still following.

"Think if we asked him to turn on his sirens, he would?"

"Put your fucking seatbelt on," Jack snarled.

"Put your seatbelt on," she murmured in a mocking, bratty voice, pulling the strap over her chest with hyperbole, making a big to-do of buckling herself in for Jack's benefit. She side-eyed him for a reaction, some form of acknowledgement, even if just annoyance, but he didn't look at her. Not once.

She kept glancing at him out of the corner of her eye, trying to decipher what he was thinking, how he was feeling, but she found his eyes were more in the rearview mirror than on the road in front of them. His body had stiffened since their run-in with the cop. She could practically see the tension in his shoulders, the way he gripped the steering wheel in all his white-knuckled rage. So much tension, she thought if she touched him he might snap like a cord and break in two.

Jack pulled off the interstate once again, took them down a dark, winding road Harley wasn't familiar with.

"Hey… this isn't the way home," she said, a touch of panic to her voice. She glanced into the side view mirror, where the police headlight's were reflected a bit too brightly. "Where are we going?"

Jack didn't answer, and continued to wind them deeper and deeper into unfamiliar territory. The woods broke away shortly, revealing a small neighborhood dotted with one-story houses, and a cul-de-sac that was visible from the road. Jack flicked on his blinker and turned. He slowed the car, and then pulled into the third driveway on the left. The house—more of a trailer, really—was a brown ramshackle without a garage, with a flat roof and a jungle for a yard. There was a wooden, L-shaped porch ramp for handicaps leading up to the front door. A part of the gutter had come apart and was dangling from the edge of the roof, like the pale, ghostly arm of a broken limb. The blinds were drawn over the windows. The AC unit, desperately hanging to the outer rim of the window, was leaking a black, viscous fluid. There was a push mower in the yard, toppled over on its side, trapped amongst the tangle of weeds, looking like the decayed remains of a corpse not yet fully decomposed, left out to rot, to be swallowed by the weeds, pulled underground until it was one of them.

Harley's mouth went dry.

"What is this?" she whispered.

Jack cut the engine, was quiet for a minute. "Get out of the car," he said at last.

She turned to look at him, horrified. "Jack—"

"Get out. Of the car," he snarled. He did look at her then, his eyes dark, dangerous. "Act natural."

She stared at him, and she knew by the hardness in his eyes that she didn't dare to be told twice. She did what he said. She opened the door, heard the hinges groan as it swung open. She got out.

The officer had stalled his cruiser just outside the short driveway and was watching from his rolled-down window. Harley stood on her tip toes and waved to him with both hands above her head, like she was flourishing pom-poms.

"Bye!" she said.

The officer flashed his lights, once, twice, and Harley squealed in glee as he drove the short distance to the cul-de-sac, circled it, and drove off the way he had come.

Jack waited until the cruiser was out of sight before turning the engine back on. Harley got back in without being asked. She barely had time to put on her seatbelt before the tires were squealing out of the driveway. The fumes from the exhaust and the stench of burnt rubber assaulted her.

He heart was beating so fast it hurt. "Whose house was that?"

Jack licked his lips. "A friend's."

He didn't say anything else for the rest of the ride home, and Harley knew better than to push him. Back on the interstate, the roads were empty, lit only by the glow of creamsicle orange street lamps. She watched the shadows fall across the dash and slide over Jack's face, watched everything fade to black in a pocket of darkness as they drove beneath an overpass, only for the light to return a moment later. There was almost something hypnotic about the swaying of the light, a calming sort of lull; the drone of the smooth pavement beneath the car, the cocoon-like warmth of being completely in the dark, even if just for a second. The ripple in the pavement when they changed lanes, or drove over a pothole.

Jack pulled off the interstate at exit sixteen, and Harley almost felt disappointed that the night was coming to an end. She wanted, just a second, for him to keep driving, for the two of them to drift off into nothingness, forever, to enter a night that was spellbinding and dark, for them to emerge into the dawning light of the morning, to see the sun break over the horizon and to feel reborn and new. Free.

The spell broke when they pulled into the driveway. The headlights slapped the garage door, shining too bright, and then Jack cut the engine. He slammed his door after he got out, and the sound echoed throughout the quiet neighborhood.

Harley looked at him, annoyed that he had to spoil her mood.

"Jeez, whatsa matter with you?"

Jack turned towards her sharply. He stared at her with such vitriol that it made the hairs on her arms stand on end, made her take a small step back. He stared at her like she repulsed him, like she was the most disgusting thing he'd ever seen, like she was not even worthy of joining the dirt on the soles of his shoes. She saw the spittle fly from his mouth when he spoke, even in the dark.

"Fuck off, Harley."

She gaped at him, watching him go, watching his long legs climb the steps to the porch. And then the front door swung open, and slammed shut, and the sound seemed to reverberate throughout the neighborhood for a long time afterwards as he left her there in the dark driveway, lit only by the thumbprint of the moon. She dropped her hands from her hips and pressed her lips together, tasting the sticky, dried tang of chocolate foam on her upper lip. Angry tears pushed their way to her eyes, and she blinked once, hard, determined not to let them fall.

It all changed, after. It changed in a way that made Harley understand that it could never go back to the way it was before, that some line that had been tethering the two of them together all these years had finally snapped, and that was it.

That was it.

Jack had become withdrawn and isolated, even more so than usual, which meant that if Harley rarely saw him before, now she neverdid. It was as if he had ceased to exist within their household. He worked longer hours now, and strange ones, too. From school he went straight to work, and most times he didn't return until one or two in the morning. Sometimes she went days without seeing him, and she still had no clue what he did or where he did it, just that he was usually in a bad mood when he came back, and dirty, too, judging from the filth and the grime she'd seen on the clothes he left in the hamper or on the bathroom floor. They didn't talk about that night at the skate park, or what he'd said to her in the driveway, or why. They didn't talk at all.

Sharon, apparently, had little issue with this—as was almost always the case no matter what Jack did—because she was rarely home either. Harley wouldn't have thought it possible, but she was spending more time at the office than she ever had before. She thought her mother would've been happy about the façade of her marriage finally dissolving, now that she was "free" from the all the lies and the hiding, the dishonesty, but that couldn't have been farther from the truth. It must have been hard, Harley thought, when you had built your entire life around a false pretense, a fabricated identity, only to have it come crumbling around you for the entire Gotham municipal government to witness, and for the Gotham Observer to mock ruthlessly in their gossip column.

And it was all for what? Harley wondered. Fifteen minutes of glorified fame, with not even a particle of dust in the air to mar the hot beam of the spotlight pointed in her direction? Had it really all been worth it?

That was probably what accounted for her mother's sour and abrasive mood. Harley had never seen her this way before, always slamming doors, or going into blind rages about the most menial things, such as Jack having tracked mud up the stairs, or Harley not picking up her messes in the kitchen after she came home from school.

If there was one thing Harley could say, it was that her mother at least looked good doing all of it, even if she had adopted a permanent scowl.

Shortly after the divorce had been finalized, packages had started arriving at the door almost daily. Sometimes the FedEx deliverer would bring two or three packages at a time, all of which were addressed for Sharon.

It seemed her mother was hoping to assuage the very public dissent of her marital woes by taking up online shopping, which she excelled at as if it were an Olympic sport. With all the packages that had been delivered, Harley figured her mother now had an all-new wardrobe—which, of course, she now had plenty of space for in her closet.

The point was, Harley was spending more time alone at home than she ever had before, and with Jack around so little that Harley could barely catch more than a glimpse of him, she felt lonelier than ever.

She would be graduating from middle school in the spring, something that both terrified and excited her. Now that Sharon was relying on one income instead of two (and Nick had, for the most part, been able to weasel himself out of paying a hefty sum in child support through some New Jersey loophole) she had announced that Harley would be attending public school—specifically Gotham Heights—instead of Lady Margaret Institute for Girls. It would be a big change for Harley, one that she was not sure she was ready for. She'd never gone to school with boys before. What if they didn't like her? And what if everyone thought she was a stuck-up preppy girl because she'd gone to private schools her whole life? What if she didn't fit in and couldn't make any friends? What if she was ridiculed and teased and people played pranks on her? And what if she was never asked to a school dance? She couldn't imagine anything worse.

It was all she could think about, and she had to think about something so she wasn't thinking about her dad and Donna, or her mom working so much and being so aloof, or the fact that she never saw Jack anymore and a divide as large as a canon had planted itself between them.

Guy helped to assuage a lot of her fears. He would be joining her at Gotham Heights, too, and he assured her that it would be fine. After all, Peter had gone to Gotham Heights, and he had turned out okay.

"Maybe we'll even have some of the same classes together," he said.

"Maybe," she replied. She'd never had classes with a friend before, let alone a boy. She didn't know if she was looking forward to attending school with boys or not. She'd had very little experience with them, and the little experiences she did have were unpleasant, for lack of a better word. She thought about Allan and his friends, all the times they had mistreated her, had thrown dirt in her face, and the time they had locked her in that awful shed with Jack.

Even Jack had been unnecessarily cruel to her. When she'd first met him, he'd shoved her to the curb, given her stitches, and for a long time had refused her friendship. There was an interim, of course, their happy years—brief though it felt—but now it was as if they had regressed back to square one. She considered herself lucky if she was able to glean eye contact from him.

Then there were times she wished they hadn't made eye contact at all.

Like in the bathroom, two months later, after being thrust headfirst into a summer that came hard and fast, and that was ending just as quickly. Harley had just gotten home from ballet practice—a day camp of sorts, practice that stretched from eight AM to four PM, with only the weekends off. Jack was almost never home at this time, having already started his evening or gone to work or otherwise doing whatever it was that he did when he wasn't home. There was no chance of their paths crossing at this time of day. Harley hummed to herself as she climbed the stairs two at a time, her backpack bouncing behind her. Her mom wasn't home from work yet and wouldn't be for another hour—maybe an hour and a half if traffic was bad, and it was usually was. This allotted her the freedom to play her music as loud as she wanted, raid the fridge, watch The Real World, and pee with the bathroom door wide open—a luxury of the finest indulgence of which she was not often granted. She had planned to do all of these things, starting with the latter first.

And that was when their eyes met.

Harley, still humming, pushing opening the bathroom door and then stopping dead in her tracks, immobilized, at the sight of him. At the sight of all the blood.

"Jack," she gasped. She gaped at him, keeled over on the closed lid of the toilet, grimacing in pain, clutching at the place below his ribcage, on the right side, with both hands. He looked startled to see her.

"Christ, Harley, do you knock?" he snarled.

She stared at him. She couldn't breathe.

She knew she had to say something, do something, but all she could do was fixate on the blood blossoming between the cracks in his long, splayed fingers, his gray t-shirt, his black jeans, soaked with it, and the dark, wet stains on the fluffy U-shaped rug lining the toilet. Bile crept up her throat, uninvited and sour.

"Get out," he rasped. He sounded short of breath. Pained. She watched his face twist into a grimace as a spurt of fresh blood gushed out between his bloody fingers. He'd already soaked through one hand towel, and she watched him reach for a larger towel that was slung over the metal rack on the wall opposite him. He grunted as he balled the towel up and pressed it against his side with trembling hands.

"Jack..." she breathed, "what happened?"

"Augh," he groaned, clearly in a great deal of pain. He was looking behind her, past the open door, towards the stairwell, as if fearful Sharon would be appear any second. "I said get out."

"But you need to go to the hospital—"

"I said get out!" he roared. Suddenly he was rearing up, hunched at the waist but still taller than her, crowding her back into the hallway with one hand—the other still clutched at his side—and pushing her with a force that had her stumbling backwards with a gasp. She fell, flat on her ass, and it was so much like that time on the curb, when they'd first met, that it sent goose bumps erupting up and down her skin just to remember it. To remember how much things hadn't changed.

He slammed the door in her face after, and she lay panting on the ground, horrified at what she'd just witnessed, but also wondering how it had happened, who would have done that to him, if he was going to be okay. Should she call the police?

She imagined calling the cops and having Krazinski show up, the way he'd stand in her doorway, hands on his hips, the belt around his waist boasting of his holstered gun, his baton, things that hurt, looking not-at-all surprised to see her. The way she'd lead him up the stairs to the bathroom, the sound of his fist rattling the door as he demanded that Jack open it. The look on his face when he'd see Jack there on the lid of the toilet, nursing his wounds—the smugness of his expression when he'd tell Jack he needed to take him "downtown," that he had a few questions for him.

No, she couldn't do that to Jack. Even if what she'd just seen absolutely terrified her.

She lay panting on the carpet, propped up on her elbows, and it was only when she went to stand that she noticed the flecks of blood on her shirt. She exhaled and it came out as a shudder. Jack's blood. That was Jack's blood.

In her room, she slammed the door shut, and her arms shook as she tugged off her shirt, stuffing it deep into the recesses of her hamper, where she masked its existence by piling other dirty clothes atop it. Out of sight, out of mind. She put on a tank top and paced her room, but she knew she couldn't leave it there. What if her mom saw? What if the blood didn't come out? That was Jack's blood. On her shirt.

She yanked it out of her hamper and ran with it downstairs, all the way to the basement, where the stairs groaned beneath her weight, threatening to give out. She clicked on the light, and the string pinged against the glass bulb hanging from the ceiling as she pulled it, flooding the basement with a sallow glow.

There was a bottle of stain remover on the shelf above the washer and dryer. She stood on her tippy-toes to reach it, and then she was uncapping it and the cap popped out of her hands and rolled into the linty, dark land that lay beneath the dryer, and she couldn't be bothered as she laid her shirt on top of the closed lid of the washer and squeezed the tube with both hands. She got some on her fingers and it burned, and she should have read the instructions first but it was fine, the burn was fine. She just needed to get the stains out.

She just needed to get the stains out.

She pulled away to assess her work, and her eyes widened when she realized she had only succeeded in the smearing the blood further, creating an even larger stain. Maybe she could pass it off as ketchup, or hot sauce. Maybe her mom wouldn't ask.

She took the shirt back upstairs and desperately scanned her room. There had to be somewhere she could put it. The trash wasn't an option. What if the trash guy saw it and called the police, and they came and asked questions? What if they accused Harley of—of murder or something? Could that happen? And putting it in the garbage disposal could be dicey—what if it got tangled, or broke the disposal all together?

Harley opened the door to her closet and then tugged the bench from her vanity across the floor towards it. She positioned it just right before hiking herself onto it and reaching for a shoebox she kept tucked on the top shelf. Inside were rocks she had collected, and coins, notes from teachers, pictures she had drawn when she was little. Birthday cards from Miss Lenora, and a cross stitch made by her as well that said, "You are my sunshine". On the floor, Harley gently put all of these things aside, balling up her blood-stained shirt and shoving it in the box so that it could be carefully concealed by some of her most precious belongings. When she put it back on the top shelf, she made sure to stack some other shoeboxes on top of it, just in case her mom went snooping.

Finished, she closed her closet and crumpled onto her bed.

Out of sight, out of mind. Maybe if she said it enough times, that stupid saying might actually come true.

The end of summer was approaching with a velocity that Harley was defenseless to try and stop, like a train traveling at full speed, downhill, with broken brakes. She'd graduated in the spring, as planned, and now high school loomed ahead of her—public high school, no less—a terrain so dark and unfamiliar it was almost hard to picture. She watched Sixteen Candles, and The Breakfast Club, and Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and Heathers, and Clueless, and 10 Things I Hate About You, trying to glean some sort of secret knowledge about how to traverse the hallowed halls of high school, trying to unpack the routine, the customs, the boy/girl dances, the letters stuffed in lockers, the chaos of the bell ringing and everyone bursting out into the halls like insects, like when you step on an anthill and the ants scramble all over each other in their haste to get away. She'd only ever known single-file lines, and slaps on the wrist, and quiet lunches, and neatly pressed uniforms—sometimes you could get away with a headband in your hair, so long as it wasn't too sparkly or glitzy to distract from the lessons.

But public school—high school—wearing the clothes you wanted to wear, sitting with your friends at lunch, laughing, joking, throwing paper airplanes across the room, surrounded by a wash of neon and color, posters in the halls declaring the Spring Fling, sign-up sheets for the new play on the bulletin board outside the auditorium, carving your name onto a wooden desk, sneaking away during P.E. to smoke against the tool shed, or under the bleachers. Going to football games, the shiny flash of pom-poms from the cheerleaders, their cute skirts, and their bouncy high ponytails. School dances, picking out the perfect dress, drinking red punch and dancing under a disco ball, and having best friends you did everything with, and having sleepovers, and staying up late on a school night with a friend to study for a big test. There was a whole world out there Harley had scarcely even dreamed of, and she was desperate for a taste. For more than a taste.

So adolescence beckoned her, and with it, a door of unexplored and exciting new things. It meant not buying pre-packaged underwear that came in a pack of five, but selecting cute, printed panties and lacy-edged thongs from the three-tiered tower in the women's department at Macy's, where it proudly boasted six pairs for $27.99. It meant buying perfume that didn't come in plastic bottles from Bath & Body Works, and jeans and tops from the junior's section instead of the kid's department. It opened up a whole new realm of possibilities.

There was just one aspect of adolescence—of Harley's burgeoning womanhood—that she felt almost embarrassed to tackle.

At the mall, she paced back and forth in front of Victoria's Secret—each trip a little shorter than the last—feeling almost ashamed to look at the loud, oversized pictures of gorgeous models hanging in the windows each time she passed. They reminded her of the girls Harley had seen in the magazine under Jack's bed, and yet here they were for the whole mall to see, out in the open in a big glossy window, trimmed in those little round, white lights, like the ones that surrounded the vanity mirrors of some glamorous Hollywood star back in the day.

The old Asian man at his collapsible shoe repair shop in the middle of the mall was staring at her from his director's chair, watching her with a blank expression.

One of the models was wearing cat ears and a lacy black bra and matching thong. She was tan and blonde and posed on all fours in the grass with a neon orange Jack-O-lantern basket close by that was on its side, all the brightly colored candies spilling onto the grass. She had a hand on her mouth as if shocked and amused by this silly mishap. "Oops!" she seemed to say. Harley quickly averted her gaze and kept on walking, finding it hard to believe that someone so beautiful would ever be embarrassed by something as simple as knocking over a basket.

In another window, there was a black and white picture of three models standing close together, topless, with their back to the camera, and their generous bottoms in barely-there underwear on full display. They had their arms slung around each other's backs and their heads turned over their shoulders, looking at the camera with an expression that was a mixture of coquettishness and self-assuredness. Beneath them, in pretty white script, it asked, "Are you a bombshell?"

Looking up at the photo now, Harley certainly didn't feel like one. She looked down and caught her open-mouthed expression in the reflection of the window. Feeling determined, she set back her shoulders and marched into the store.

She was immediately accosted by the smell of too-sweet perfume, pulsating music, and hot, white lights. There were plastic, shiny black mannequins who stood with their legs spread, dressed in pushup bras and "cheeky" briefs. Others were in see-through nighties trimmed in lace, or push-up corsets with matching garter sets, each mannequin positioned to look confident and cool, designed for this one, singular purpose. Harley felt sick to her stomach as she aimlessly perused the store, not really sure what she was looking for.

Are you a bombshell? she heard in a sexy, demure voice that was not her own.

She was staring at a thong that looked more like an expensive piece of string when she was approached by a pretty, chipper young woman with shiny brown hair. She was dressed in an all-black suit with matching flats. She looked sensible, but chic.

"Hey there, are you finding everything okay?" she asked with a friendly smile.

Harley assessed her without saying anything. She seemed nice, trustworthy, even… Harley wondered if she could divulge her insecurities to her and tell her that she had no idea whether or not she really belonged in a place like this. She felt her mouth go dry the longer she looked at her and fought to find words.

"…Do you have the underwear that those models on your sign are wearing?" she finally managed, halfheartedly pointing in some vague direction that she hoped was the front of the store.

"Oh, our new Bombshell collection? Of course!" she chirped. She looked at Harley and was about to lead her to them, but stopped short when she noticed Harley wasn't looking at her at all. The woman smiled, though this time with less pearly whites and a little more understanding. "That's not really what you want though, is it?"

Harley shook her head no, suddenly feeling overwhelmed by everything. Maybe it was the gentleness in the way in which the pretty sales associate had asked that made her feel suddenly teary, or maybe it was the hot lights or the perfumes or the sleek black mannequins in their seductive poses, but suddenly everything felt like too much. Entering high school. Missing her dad. Not seeing Jack around anymore. Wondering whether or not she was ready to grow up as the world was suddenly demanding of her. She let out a long breath. She was not going to cry in the middle of all these luxurious and overpriced bras and panties, and especially not in front of this poor woman; that was probably the last thing she wanted, to witness the emotional breakdown of a pre-teen girl near the end of her shift.

"Hon? You okay?" She lowered her head a little so she could look Harley in the eye. She was quiet for a beat. "You know what you look like you need?" Harley looked up. "A bra that actually fits." She smiled gently. "Do you know your size?"

She bit her lip, shaking her head no. She glanced almost shamefully at her boobs. "It's like these things grew overnight," she confessed. That wasn't entirely untrue. It was like she'd woken with two giant cantaloupes attached to her chest. She wasn't sure how she felt about that yet. Most girls her age—especially the girls in her ballet class—were all flat-chested.

The woman laughed, though it was not unkind. "Oh boy, do I know the feeling. Why don't you come with me and we'll get you all sized and fitted and pick you out something cute, how does that sound?"

Harley nodded, starting to feel a little better. She liked that idea.

Two hours later, and Harley walked out of that store knowing it like she knew the back of her own hand. She had purchased five bras, fourteen pairs of underwear, two pajama sets, and a tropical-smelling perfume/body wash/lotion trio. For her troubles, she had also received a free nautical-striped beach tote, even though summer was over.

Regretfully, Harley realized in that one visit she had blown through almost all of the cash her mother had given her. Bras and panties were not cheap. With the few dollars she had left, she was able to scrounge up a hot pretzel and a pulpy, fresh-squeezed sour lemonade from Auntie Anne's, and leave a few pennies in the tip jar in front of the register. She felt like a real woman carrying around her striped pink Victoria's Secret bags, all her lacy undergarments tucked inside beneath pink crepe paper. She'd never felt so confident and ready to face the world.

When her mother picked her up shortly after, she groaned as she rifled through Harley's shopping bags in the parking lot.

"Good God, Harley, I send you in there to get a new wardrobe for school and you come out with lingerie?"

"It's not lingerie," Harley huffed in her seat, snapping her seat belt across her with more forced than necessary as it clicked into the lock. "I got pajamas, too," she grumbled.

"Did you get any jeans? Tops? Shoes for PE? I gave you a list."

Harley didn't answer, which was answer enough.

Her mother sighed, rolling her eyes heavenward as if the God she didn't believe in could tell her why he had burdened her with such a difficult child. "I guess I'll have to go and do your shopping myself," she said, starting the car. "Really, Harleen, what were you thinking? I should make you return all of this right now."

Of course, that didn't happen, but just to be safe, Harley cut off all the tags as soon as they were home and she was in the safety of her room with the door locked. She tried on her new bras as well, turning this way and that in her floor-length mirror, modeling her underwear and the curves she had never seen before.

She heard that coy, whispering voice in her head, demanding to know, "Are you a bombshell?"

The sound of footsteps on the stairs drew Harley to a pause. Those were Jack's steps. He was never home this early. What if he was hurt again? What if something had happened?

Harley threw a t-shirt over her head and a pair of gym shorts, shimmying them up her legs as she hopped to the other side of her room, so she could press her ear against the wall they shared. She heard him close his door, and a then a thud as something hit the floor, like a bag, or maybe some books. The sound of his bed creaking. His light turning on. Silence.

And then she was going to him, drawn, like she was tied to the end of an invisible string. She was knocking on his door before she even knew what she was going to say.

"Jack?" she whispered to the closed wood. "It's me."

She waited, and waited, and then there was the groan of the bed springs, and the click of the door as it opened, and Jack's stifling presence in the doorway, looming, dangerous, a halo of light fighting to slash its way past him.

He didn't say anything, and Harley was so taken aback by his height, by his appearance, that for a moment she couldn't even speak. It had been a while since they'd stood face to face like this. He looked terrifying. And sad. And so beautiful. Something sharp twisted in Harley's gut at that last admission.

She couldn't help but notice the circles under his eyes were so dark they almost looked like bruises. Maybe they were bruises—

"What?" he said, like he was bored, like he had other things to do.

Harley swallowed the cottony lump that had lodged itself in the tight column of her throat. "I just wanted to know if you were alright. You know, from the other day."

Jack grinned at her. Jack grinned at her in a way she did not like, in a way that made the hairs on her arms stand on end and that made the loose skin under his eyes bunch up so that his eyes were narrowed, his irises nearly black. It was devious, itwas wrong, it was gleaming canines and being nailed to her spot in front of him from just the intensity of his gaze.

"Harls," he said, and it almost could have been conversational—light—him throwing her nickname around like that, like old times. It could have been like that, if not for how black his eyes were, or how the muscles in his jaw pulsed when he closed his mouth. "Don't worry about the blood," he said, leaning towards her just a fraction, fire in his eyes. His smile gone. "It wasn't all mine."