Indigo: The Saving Bailey Trilogy #2 by Nikki Roman

the soft part of you and the rigid part, too. I love every part of you, the good and the bad.”
    “What about Bailey?”
    “Everyone loves her. But, I want to love you because no one else will.”
    “You like me because I’m undesirable.”
    “I like you because it’s a challenge ,” he says. “A challenge to love the pretty and the ugly. With Bailey, all there is, is beauty. I want to fall in love with the beast, too.”
    He kisses me long and hard. When we pull apart, I let Bailey’s locket swing between us, unfurling the chain from my grip.
    Trenton looks at the locket thirstily, like a bottle of water in the middle of a desert. I am equally as thirsty. It is the last piece of the bird we have. I won’t be going back to watch her. I may never live to see another day. Trenton knows that to try and see her would mean his arrest—or worse.
    We are both stuck with Bailey wedged between us.
    “You take it,” I say.
    “No, you take it.”
    “No, you,” we say at the same time.
    “You’ve kind of had this sick grip on her since you guys were little. I guess it belongs to you more than me,” Trenton admits.
    “But you drowned her in the pond,” I counteract.
    “Yeah, but she didn’t die…I mean, she didn’t stay dead.”
    Sick of listening to us bicker, the sun goes to bed and the moon rises, telling us that we must conclude this fight; Papa will surely be rampaging down the lawn at any moment.
    “It’s getting late,” Trenton says. “Please take it. I think you should have it. Maybe it will help you face your dad tonight. Maybe, someday, you can return it to her.”
    “That would make her so happy…” I say, my voice trailing off as I picture the look on her face when I hand over the locket she’d been blindly reaching for this whole time.
    “But you aren’t in the business of making her happy?”
    “I wasn’t, but I’ve changed. I’m tired of hurting people. I’m even remorseful for what I did.”
    “Okay… why the sudden change?”
    “I guess being kidnapped and threatened like I was made me see her in another light.”
    “Scared you straight, did it?”
    “Scared me right silly. I can’t stand to think of what I put her through. Her and everyone else. She’s a stronger person than me, that’s for sure.”
    “She’s the strongest…but you are, too,” he says. “The way you put up with your dad.”
    “Speaking of which, I better go do that,” I say, opening the passenger side door.
    “Wait!” he shouts, reaching over my seat and accidentally knocking the hula girl off his dashboard. “Give me another kiss…or just stay. Don’t go inside.”
    “It’ll only make things harder.”
    “One more kiss,” he begs. “ For the road .”
    I look over my shoulder to make sure Papa isn’t hurtling toward me at top speed in his white wife beater with the yellow pit stains, then I lean forward, into the car, and seal lips with Trenton.
    If a kiss can be peppered with acid, this one is. The signs melt the same way they do when I’m rolling, the ground once solid beneath my feet turns to rubber, soft and bouncy. I float on the ecstasy of Trenton’s kiss all the way up my driveway and through the screen door. Then it washes right out of me; Papa’s heavy footfalls as he comes to answer the door and the sound of Trenton’s car driving into the night.
    I close my fist tightly around Bailey’s locket and my eyelids around tears that I swear to myself I will not let fall. Papa opens the door and I step inside, giving over to the inevitable beating that is sure to come.
    The door clicks shut behind me. Papa locks it.

Chapter 11
    The prison building, a structure of cement and red brick cloaked in silver sheets of rain, looks particularly ominous from where I stand. Yellow shafts of light from towers in the courtyard where prisoners are let out to exercise and convene, break through the heavy downfall. Guards stand in the towers with pensive eyes, surveying for a criminal gone