The last thing I needed was for Matt to see me with one of the Bastards.
Nolan opened his mouth to say something but I stopped him before he could get the words out.
“That wasn’t a question.” I opened the door. “Wait here.”
31
LILAH
I was relievedwhen he didn’t follow me. He and Jude were way less obnoxious than Rafe, but they still had minds of their own, and none of the Bastards were great at taking direction.
They made their own way, forging their own path and going off-road when the one they were on didn’t suit them. I was still coming around to the fact that instead of terrifying me, their recklessness was a giant turn-on.
Maybe it was because they embodied everything I’d never been able to embrace. Maybe it was because I secretly envied them. Maybe it was just because they were stupid hot and even I — who’d hated them with the fire of Dante’s ninth circle of hell — couldn’t deny it.
I made my way down the sidewalk until I came to Mrs. Pulaski’s yard, then cut down the cracked sidewalk that ran along the side of her house. I was counting on the fact that she’d be dozing in her recliner without her hearing aids.
It was way more risky to access the backyard of my childhood home from the front of the house. My mom had eagle eyes — and ears. She also gave new meaning to the phrase “nosy neighbor.” Apparently it was only a sin to be nosy if you actually gossipedabout the neighbors, and since my mom didn’t have any friends, she was content to busy herself with knowledge of her neighbors’ lives.
I passed Mrs. Pulaski’s trash cans, sitting up against the white siding of her small house, and continued to the backyard. I was glad her only pet was Mr. Riggens, an ancient cat too rotund and decrepit to jump on any of the windowsills. If Mrs. Pulaski had a dog, I’d be screwed, but the house remained silent as I crossed her overgrown back yard, climbed the chain-link fence, and landed with a soft thud on the dead grass in my mom’s backyard.
Everything was still brown from winter, but I knew it would be lush and green in summer, the air fragrant with freshly cut grass, the now-dormant flower beds brimming with life. From the looks of it, my mom had already been at work, a rake leaning against the house next to the back door, the beds cleared of dead leaves in preparation for spring.
I felt a pang of regret as I thought of my mom, bent to the dirt behind the house, planting annuals around the hydrangeas and peonies that returned every year. I couldn’t live with her — not ever again — but I also couldn’t help missing her. Or maybe I just missed the parent she might have been.
The one I wished she’d been.
And it hadn’t been all bad. I still remembered the way her palm had felt against my fevered forehead when I’d had the flu, the way she could laugh when Matt said something funny.
I stuffed down the swell of sadness that rose in my chest and headed toward the house in a hurry, hoping my mom wasn’t looking out the kitchen window, then I cut over to the concrete pathway — identical to Mrs. Pulaski’s — at the side of the house.
It was one level — the only way I’d been able to sneak out the night of Brandon Miller’s house party, the night that hadchanged my life — and I stopped at the window closest to the back of the house and leaned in to listen.
It was quiet, which meant that Matt was either reading or listening to music with his headphones on, assuming he was in the room at all.
I hoped he was reading, preferably without headphones.
I tapped lightly on his window, then waited. Nothing happened, and I tapped again, this time a little bit louder.
I heard footsteps from inside, then watched as the window slid upward.
Matt appeared in the opening, surprise written on his face.
He frowned. “What are you doing here?”
“Wow, really? That’s the greeting I get?” I asked. “I haven’t seen you in months.”
Even in so short a time, he’d changed. His hair was shorter, making him look older, and there was a faint shadow on his upper lip that hadn’t been there before. His green eyes — same as mine — were guarded, his teeth perfect from the braces he’d finally gotten off last summer.
I realized with surprise that he was handsome. He looked like any other sixteen-year-old kid, which was to say not at all like someone with a religious freak of a mom who barely let him out of her sight.
“Sorry,” he said, “but why are you knocking on my window like a stalker instead of coming to the front door?”
“You know why,” I said, keeping my voice low. “I needed to talk to you. In private.”
The rest was self-explanatory: the fact that my mom wouldn’t allow me in the house, that she monitored Matt’s cell phone.
“Mom’s going to lose it if she finds you here.”