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Not at the mill itself, obviously, but at the bonfire. He hasn’t attended a single reunion event so far, but then again, he’s been otherwise occupied with me. Maybe tonight he finally decided to catch up with some of his old classmates.

“Goddamn it,” I mutter as I push myself off the dock.

I don’t want to be this woman. The one chasing after a man in the middle of the night because he didn’t call.

Still, I think I deserve some kind of explanation for why he disappeared on me last night. And while we’re at it, maybe he can explain why the hell he thought going through my things was a good idea.

By the time I reach the tree line, disappointment has curdled into anger, quickening my steps as I follow the distant glow of firelight.

The party reaches me before I reach it.

Music pulses through the woods, mixed with bursts of laughter and overlapping voices that grow louder with every step. Halloween decorations mark the path ahead, jack-o’-lanterns glowing from the ground like some macabre trail of breadcrumbs. Scarecrows clutching pitchforks have been propped against tree trunks. Ghosts dangle from branches, their white fabric shifting in the breeze. Even the occasional noose hangs overhead.

My nostrils flare.

Of course.

We’re still weeks away from Halloween, and even though it has absolutely nothing to do with our reunion, apparently any excuse is a good excuse to turn Fairhope into a fucking haunted house.

The trees finally thin, giving way to a wide clearing filled with old picnic tables and mismatched chairs. A weathered swing set sits forgotten near the edge of the woods, while a massive bonfire rages at the center of it all.

I stop dead. Suddenly, I’m not twenty-nine anymore. I’m sixteen.

This is where the Reds burned my notebooks.

For a moment, everything around me disappears. The music. The laughter. The dozens of people drinking and dancing around the fire.

All I can see are flames devouring page after page of everything I’d poured myself into.

Everything they took from me.

I haven’t stood in this clearing in years, yet my body remembers it as if it happened yesterday.

Then laughter cuts through the memory. Familiar laughter.

I turn sharply toward the fire. Peyton and Misty are dancing together while Delaney returns with drinks in hand. She passes them around, and the three of them burst into laughter, swaying to the music like they don’t have a care in the fucking world.

Everyone else fades into the background as my hands curl into fists.

This morning, they stood at Alder Cemetery looking like their entire world had fallen apart. Tonight, they’re drinking, dancing, and laughing.

As if they didn’t lower one of their best friends into the ground only hours ago. As if Jordan, Brooke, Sydney, and Amber weren’t dead. As if none of it fucking mattered.

Something dark and poisonous unfurls inside me. If hate were poison, I’d drop dead where I stand.

I’m so fucking angry that I march over to the nearest table and grab an unopened bottle of rum. I twist off the cap and take a long pull, glaring at the trio over the rim.

So far, no one seems to have noticed me. Or if they have, they’re pretending not to. Probably for the best, considering I’m sure everyone heard the rumors about my supposed involvement in the Reds’ recent string of bad luck.

I take another drink. This one is so big that rum spills from the corner of my mouth.

My gaze never wavers from them as I wipe my mouth with the sleeve of my jacket. I’m still staring at the three of them, silently wishing a plague on all their fucking houses, when Delaney looks my way. Our eyes lock.

She doesn’t say anything to Peyton or Misty. She simply sets her drink on the nearest table and heads toward me.

I keep drinking as I watch her slither through the crowd like the snake she is.

“You lost?” she asks when she reaches me, looking me up and down with open disdain.