“No,” I say quietly, almost whispering. “I’m afraid to.” I look up at the sun. “She has a lot to her past. I don’t know much, but I met one of them, and he isn’t the friendly neighborhood type.”

“Fuck,” he hisses. “How in are you?”

I think about my answer just as I’ve been thinking about this whole thing for the past couple of days, and that is what it has been … a couple of days. But just the thought of not seeing her hurts my heart. The thought of going a day without her makes it almost hard to breathe. “I’m all in.”

“Then you need to sit with her and put all your cards on the table. You need to tell her.”

“What if she …” I start. “What if she’s overwhelmed by it?”

“Then you show her,” he says. “She has probably had people promise her things before.” His tone is soft. “But they were probably empty promises, so you have to show her that you are a man who stands behind his promises.”

“Yeah,” I say, and then I hear my name being called and look back to see Ralph is trying to get my attention. “I have to go.”

“Okay. Call me for anything,” he says. “You hear?”

“Yeah,” I say into the phone and then hold up my hand to Ralph. “I’ll call you later,” I say, disconnecting, then getting up and walking to meet Ralph. “What’s up?”

“Nothing, but Dylan was looking for you,” he says, and we turn to walk inside.

“Is everything okay?” I ask. My heart had started to beat faster, thinking he was hurt, but then I see him playing basketball with the other kids, and he looks up and sees me.

“Justin,” he yells, “I got a three-pointer!” His eyes beam with pride, and his smile is so big that his eyes crinkle at the sides. “It even went swish.”

“That’s amazing, buddy,” I say. Standing, I watch the game with my hands on my hips, already setting a plan for tonight into motion.

I get into the truck after buckling Dylan in and call Caroline’s number. “The customer you are calling is unavailable at the moment. Please try again later.” I look at the phone and then hang up, and during the forty-five-minute drive, I spend most of the time speeding and trying to tell myself that she just turned off her phone. I try not to think about the trouble she could be in or the trouble that is always lurking around her.