Page 1 of Fall onto me

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We try to act like everything is normal.

Despite Envy wiping out the bank account, in spite of the Keeper being after us, or how it feels like whenever me and Foster grow closer, the world threatens to rip us apart.

We pretend.

Like earlier, when we scarfed down cheesy burgers with greasy smiles at Jack’s. Or now, when I’m propped on Fosters sink while he gives me back a slice of my freedom.

My pink streak.

“I got this brand.” He shakes the contents. “Maybe this way it will be the color you want.”

I smile, taking the box and reading over the instructions. “I quite liked the red streak, but I’m really excited for hot pink.”

This was Foster’s idea, this morning he woke me up and said, ‘You’re not starting your senior year without that streak.’

The normal moment made me forget for a few seconds that we’re living in the lion’s den. “Let’s be honest, it will probably fade to red. Hairstyling isn’t my expertise.”

We laugh for a moment, and he plants a kiss on my lips. Being playful is all we have left since safety is out the window. Sleepless nights and days filled with looking over our shoulders.

Nowhere is safe. the Keeper owns Miami. Well, at least the shadowed, hidden areas. The harbor is where everything bad is done, it’s where the monsters come out to play. That’s all we know.

The Keeper, who I’ve now dubbed TK, is a shadow who sometimes I forget is human and not a supernatural being that’s more powerful than any force.

And now, if he spares our lives by some miracle, I’ll be the happiest girl alive. But I was raised to trust my intuition, and the pure sense of paranoia I’ve felt over the past few months has been nothing short of crippling.

Eventually, he’s going to come for us, and I don’t know what he’ll want in return for our lives. We could try to wrangle money, to race our hearts out to pay him back. But I don’t know if that will work.

I don’t know if this is a better option for him because we don’t know what he wants.

Months have strolled by in a blur, I’m unsure how we even went through our junior finals, because I don’t remember a second of them. The paranoia is making my life miserable, and I think that’s exactly what TK wants … for Foster to be in a constant state of worry.

My incredibly amazing boyfriend tries to act like he’s not, but I watch him. His mannerisms, the slight contour of clenched muscle along his deep jawline that never seems to relax. His forearms, the way the muscles are in a constant state of flexing, stiff and ready for a battle we will never see coming.

TK is making him sweat, and never knowing when he’ll strike is Hell all by itself. Imagine a copperhead rattling around you, twenty-four-seven, pissed and coiled.

It’s nice to imagine that TK’s forgotten all about the money Foster owed him, but I don’t need to be naïve. I need to be on guard. Because at the end of the day, this doesn’t involve ‘us’. It involves only Foster, and I am racking my brain trying to figure out how to help him.

How can I help when we don’t know what TK wants?

“I love the way you look in my shirt.” Foster grins, tracing his inked knuckles across the exposed skin of my thighs. He draws me out of myself too many times a day to count. Then, he puts on the set of gloves that came with the hair color and sections out a strip.

Foster’s good at this, distractions.

It’s rare to find someone who gives you the same reprieve as reading a book. That moment where you flip through the pages, unknowingly getting lost in an all-nighter that pulls you away from the problems of this world and strips out all the bad parts to allow you a brief moment of escape from it all.

He is a book for me.

I get lost in him every time he’s near, but when he’s not beside me, a sinking fear laces every nerve ending. My senses go into overdrive, wondering if TK has found him.

“How about we do a thicker strip? Like this.” I grab a three-inch section on the left side, under a thin layer from the top so it can be a peek-a-boo look.

Foster nods. “Love that.” The way he grins, so casually like there isn’t a weight on him, is the most concerning part of it all. Surely, he feels that massive world that sits on his shoulders.

He gets to work, and unlike last time when we were covered in color and giggling in the shower, we sit in silence. The absence of the faded red reminding us why it’s gone in the first place.

How I went back to my parents to try and pay off a racing debt to keep TK off our tracks. But then Envy, the bitch, drained his account after faking a pregnancy that nearly broke Foster in half.

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