“Nah. They’d never test you. Look at you. You got nail polish on and half that stuff you’re wearing is designer shit. You got money.” He kicked his feet up on my coffee table.

“So what do you want?” I crossed my arms. Chances are that a guy carrying that much cocaine would have a…

He slid a pistol onto his lap. “Just need my stuff. Then I can get going.”

I didn’t know why I did it. Well, sure, when I was a kid, I’d had my share of haters. Bullies and stuff. Kids didn’t take kindly to a difference. And I could French braid all the girls’ hair by fifth grade and did so on the playground for Pokémon cards, so I had an ingrained instinct to make jerks’ lives hard. Or harder if I could.

“Nope. Sorry. Fed it to the squirrels. You know, city rodents are really into that kind of thing. We can probably see the little disco balls from their rave from here if we look hard enough.” I pointed with my pinkie out the window.

“I have a gun and you have a wise mouth. Not that smart, huh?” He stood up and walked to me.

I held my ground. In all the years I took beatings, I learned flinching or backing down made it worse.

The man put the gun to my temple. “You wouldn’t be that stupid.”

“You’d be surprised how stupid I can be.” And then I leaned forward and kissed him.

Endgame and I had our first make-out session with his loaded gun pointed at my head.

If that wasn’t a forewarning of times ahead, I didn’t know what was. And now I was here, pretending to date my little sister’s best friend to put distance between him and me.

There’s not a friend I had that couldn’t say I told you so. That they all told me dating a drug dealer—hell, letting him move in with me was a horrible idea.

God bless them, they put up with him. And some of them could even see it. The crackle between him and me. It bordered on hate. It could be confused for love. He’d hurt me so many times. Cheated on me more than I wanted to admit.

I allowed it to continue because I was addicted to that feeling. The freefall of danger. How wrong it was to let him in time and time again. To believe that he was changed this time. That it was real. The way he would act like I meant everything until he treated me like garbage.

Endgame had a horrible childhood. You couldn’t even call it a childhood. He was hustling on the street while I was learning to ride a bike.