Page 56

Kissing me and running. It all circled in my head as my feet pounded the pavement.

Coward. Frustrating punk.

So I ran. Running simplified things. There was breath. Pace. Distance.

And if you did it hard enough sometimes your brain turned off and that sweet perfect rush hit you.

There was the pull in my calves when the road climbed, the tight burn in my lungs when I pushed harder than I should, the steady beat of my arms.

Everything else had to wait its turn.

The Bishop boys would've all complained if they'd seen what I was running in. When it was hot out like now—as it was for most of the year in this part of Texas—I wore some variation of poured-on shorts, a white sports bra, my phone in a belt bag, and whatever running shoes I still hadn’t burned through.

The tread on my right shoe slipped slightly on the next turn. Damn it. Three weeks.

I was hard on running shoes, but three weeks was ridiculous.

My hair was braided into a fishtail, the streaks making it look more elaborate than it was. It had taken me two minutes.

My school bag and a change of clothes had been tossed into Ruckus’s car as I headed out. He didn’t have morning practice, so he’d bring them.

Somebody always did.

I’d locked the front door behind me and tucked my house key into the little zip pocket at the back of my shorts.

I started before sunrise, when the heat was still tolerable and Briar looked softer than it did later in the day.

The road outside our houses narrowed quickly once I got past the last stretch of mailboxes. Houses sat farther apart there, separated by acreage and fencing, oak and cedar breaking up long strips of open land.

The sky had gone from black to a hazy gray-blue, streaked faintly pink near the horizon.

Humidity already clung to my skin.

Texas did not believe in easing anybody into the day.

I settled into my pace. Not jogging. Running.

There was a difference.

Jogging was something people did because they’d eaten too much cake.

Running was work. I knew my pace without checking my watch. I knew how long my stride became when I opened it up.

I knew where the road tipped downhill enough to gain time and where the incline afterward punished greed.

I knew the low-water crossing was just under two miles from home, the lightning-split oak meant I’d passed three, and the air cooled along the creek beneath the trees.

My body knew Briar better than my head did. It was one of the things I liked best about running.

No guessing. No wondering what somebody meant.

No trying to figure out why Declan Bishop could spend two years acting like I disgusted him, then cross a yard in the middle of the night half naked and armed less than a minute after I texted him that I was scared.

Distance was honest. A mile was a mile whether you wanted it to be or not. I passed the old Miller place and picked up speed. There was nobody ahead of me.

That bothered me.

Not because I was afraid. Because I liked having somebody to chase. To overtake. To pass. To leave in the dust.