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CHAPTER1
Seattle, Washington
Caitlin McCormick
“I bet you won’t,” Trey teased.
I stared back at him, narrowing my eyes at his challenge. I imagined I looked pretty damn badass with the campfire flickering between us. Never in my life had I ever backed down from a dare, and he knew it. The left side of his mouth lifted in the tiniest smirk and he tried to hide it, but I saw it anyway.
“Want to make a bet?”
I sat back in the forest green wooden lawn chair and lifted an eyebrow, making a show of this. Stacy and Tina giggled beside me. They knew how this was going to end too. I’d known the two of them since elementary school. The three of us were thick as thieves, quite literally some days. They knew what kind of a girl I was.
“It would certainly make for a wild graduation celebration,” Rico murmured.
He took a long draw of his beer, and I watched him closely. To be honest, I’d had my eyes on him for a long time. He had the bad boy look down, from his ripped baggy jeans to the tattoos that covered his arm. He’d gone to Franklin High, a public school on the south side of town that had a glaringly bad reputation. There were plenty of gangs down there, as well as organized crime, which was quite different than the prep school I’d gone to on Mercer Island, but good riddance to that place because I never had to walk through those doors again.
We’d all graduated this morning and now we were free to do what we wanted.
Rico’s gaze met mine and I smiled. With a slight nod, he let his eyes drag up and down my body. I hadn’t been sure he was interested before, but I was reasonably certain he was now. If there was ever a day to take a chance, this was it.
“Imagine what we could do with money like that,” Tina said.
Her eyes were already a bit glassy. Between all of us, she was definitely the lightweight. It only took one beer before she was tipsy as all hell. I hadn’t been paying attention, but I was pretty sure she was on her second. If she got all the way to a third, I was definitely going to be the one holding her hair when she puked tonight.
That was me, the ever-loyal friend.
I rolled my eyes. She was lucky I liked her. Her parents were also ridiculously filthy rich, which was the main reason we had such ritzy digs for tonight’s celebration. The fridge was fully stocked with top shelf shit along with whatever else we had wanted. I tipped back my hard blackberry cider, my own special request from a local brewery somewhere in the northwest. It was delicious.
Tina sat beside me, the smoke of a freshly lit joint swirling up from her hand. I watched it for a moment, mesmerized before she saw me looking and passed it to me. I took a long hit, mostly because I wanted to impress Rico a bit. Trey watched me intently, his disbelief stark on his face as I held the smoke inside for several long moments before I let it all out in one long breath.
Rico smirked, chuckling softly. He approved.
The soft haze fell over me quickly, making me feel all sorts of brave. The buzz from the alcohol was already burning through me. The combination of the two made me feel untouchable, like I could conquer anything in the world. Maybe today was the day I would.
“We could probably get our own private jet and fly down to the islands,” Stacy supposed.
“Yeah. We could lay out on the beach and drink daiquiris all day brought to us by hot cabana boys covered in tanning oil,” Tina giggled.
“You would like that, wouldn’t you?” I teased, and Tina fell into a fit of laughter.
Of the three of us, Tina had always been the most boy crazy. I don’t think she’d ever gone more than a week being single all throughout high school. Her parents hadn’t let her date till she’d turned fifteen, but she’d made the most of it in the past four years. Right now, Trey was the flavor of the month, but that had only been for the last three or four weeks. It was through him that I’d first met Rico. We’d been hanging out most nights of the week.
“Don’t worry, baby. You’ll always be my favorite cabana boy,” Tina assured Trey, and he shook his head, but I could see amusement written all over his face. He was head over heels for her. He tried to act all brave and badass around her, but that boy looked at her like she was his entire world.
What I wouldn’t give to have a man look at me like that…
“You said you guys have an in, right?” I asked Rico, and his answering grin nearly split his face in half. My adrenaline spiked and the buzz beneath my skin spiraled higher with excitement.
“Yeah. They even have eyes on a place for the perfect getaway car. Said the owners haven’t been home in a month and have a black Escalade just sitting in the garage unused, ripe for the taking,” Rico murmured.
His eyes glimmered and I imagined him looking at me like Trey did every time I caught him watching Tina.
The fire crackled, already starting to die down. I looked at the pile of wood already chopped and waiting for us, deciding against it almost immediately. I guzzled the rest of my can of cider before I tossed it in the garbage pail nearby. I leaned forward, placing my elbows on my knees and looking at each one of my friends.
“Well then, what are we waiting for?”
* * *
