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I’m ready to walk back into that school, and my house, and have the best year.
I suck in a long breath and look up at her as she crafts my hair into beautiful locks. “Where’d you learn how to do all this?”
My desk is covered in makeup and hair product. When I met her, she looked like a teenage guy starting his first metal band.
But she just smiles. “I always knew how to do all this. But when you steal cars and fence tech for a living, it’s best not to be noticed by people who consider women just as much of a commodity.”
“Right,” I murmur. Her lips are a dark pink, and her eyeliner make her eyes almost look like a cat’s. She’s gorgeous, and I can imagine she was around a lot of people whose attention she didn’t want.
She doesn’t talk about her life here in Weston much, but like Noah, she’s made big changes to chase the life she wants.
“Your first time…” I broach. “Was it okay?”
She releases a lock of hair and takes another in the clip of the curling iron. “I was fourteen.”
I narrow my eyes. “Did he…”
I don’t want to say it.
But she quickly adds, “He would’ve stopped if I’d asked him to.”
I release a breath.
“I was just too young to understand what I was agreeing to,” she points out.
“Do you regret it?”
“Regret is pointless,” she tells me. “I can’t change anything.”
She should tell that to my dad. He regrets so much, and I think he knows he projects it. He thinks I’ll regret racing and not going to college if I decide not to.
“But it was bad,” she goes on. “And the way he treated me afterward was bad. The feelings I have about it are bad. Sometimes I wish I didn’t have those memories.” She looks at me in the mirror. “Other times, I know they’re the reason that I realize exactly what I have in Hawke. He’s my love.”
I smile at that. My cousin deserves her too. He’s good to her.
“Were you scared, moving to the Falls and everything changing?” I ask.
“Yeah. But I was scared all the time before that too,” she explains. “You gotta choose which scared you want to be. Love or fear, remember?”
I nod. Love or fear. If I choose to back off racing, it won’t be because I love my parents. It would be because I’m afraid of making them unhappy. Or because I’m afraid of getting injured.
She finishes my hair and covers it with hairspray. I look at my makeup in the mirror, my dress laying on the bed.
“You okay?” she asks me a question next.
I nod. “Yeah.”
“Anything you want to talk about?”
Mischief gleams in her eyes, and I laugh, knowing she wants to talk about sex now that I’m having it too. “You mean, do I need advice on the most optimal position for reaching multiple climaxes?”
“Let me know when you’re ready. I have an answer for that.”
I stand up, my cheeks warming. “I think I’d like to figure it out on my own.”
I dress in a backless, black dress with spaghetti straps and a slit for cleavage that trails halfway down my stomach. The waist is tight and then flows out in a wide skirt that falls to mid-thigh. I slide on some black high-top sneakers, and thirty minutes later, we’re walking out the front door.
A whistle cuts through the air, and I see Coral, Mace, and Codi standing around Coral’s car.
