Gwen said her brothers are troublemakers, the whole lot of them, and she didn’t want any of her new friends getting mixed up in their messes. She warned us a few months into our freshman year when three of her four brothers crashed Gwen’s Sasquatch-hunting party that no one else from her invite list came to except for us girls—Syn, me, Arie, and Riley.
We sassed the guys for making fun of Gwen’s belief in Bigfoot, and they called us the Sass Squad for our sassiness. The name stuck, and that’s what we call our small but mighty friend group.
Braxton is serving a five-year sentence for grand theft auto, so the others have never met him. Gwen’s next-oldest brother, Brady, is in prison for embezzlement. He was sentenced during our sophomore year. I’m not sure what the twins, Bram and Benedict, are up to, other than that they’re in California running some type of business, according to Gwen.
The other students avoid Gwen as though her brothers are the Four Horsemen, except for Dare Sterling, though he’s not a student. Who needs a college education when your parents and the rest of your family are filthy rich from building a gaming empire, and you’re brilliant enough to create and test the games yourself? That’s Dare and the Sterlings in a nutshell.
Dare could’ve lived anywhere after he graduated from high school. Instead, he followed Midnight to Dumas when Midnight had the bright idea of buying a house and opening a bar so he could keep an eye on his toxic obsession, a.k.a. my bestie, Riley Lee.
I’ve caught Dare giving the students his infamous stare-down, which can make a grown man wither and shrivel into himself, when they give Gwen a wide berth, like her brothers’ messes with the law are contagious.
My poor friend. She isn’t to blame for her brothers’ criminal tendencies, and I refuse to put the weight of what happened with me and Braxton on her shoulders.
“You’ll tell right away if he makes contact, right?” Gwen studies me with her all-seeing eyes.
She might see the world through rose-colored glasses, but she isn’t clueless to how cruel the world can be, and the world was cruel when my life collided with her older brother’s before she came into my life a year later.
“I doubt he remembers my number.” It didn’t take much for Braxton to convince me to go for a joyride in his exotic sports car. A warm, friendly smile. The promise of a birthday cupcake at the end of the drive.
My seventeenth birthday was memorable for a different reason.
That night changed his life, and it was my fault for pushing him to go faster until the scenery was nothing but a blur. Then the curve we hadn’t expected came into sight, but Braxton wasn’t paying attention to the road. His eyes were on me.
Oh God, the look of horror on his face when the car went airborne. My heart had dropped to my stomach, and my heartbeats hammered in my ears as the ground came fast and furious.
On impact, I was sandwiched between the dash and the seat. Searing pain sliced me from my ankle to my hip. Bones broke. My head slammed against the glass. The windshield shattered. Braxton reached for me. Blood ran down the side of his face. Something sticky slid over my eye. My vision clouded and went in and out. I took a deep breath, but I couldn’t draw in any air. I couldn’t breathe.
I can’t breathe. My field of vision narrows. I take shallow breaths in and out. My body tingles from head to toe. My gaze shoots to the rows of bleachers from where I’m sitting to the first row. How quickly can I reach the safety of the bathroom before I hyperventilate and my fingers cramp up?
Thank goodness Gwen’s words pull me out of my waking nightmare before I have a full-blown panic attack.
“Braxton has the memory of an elephant. If you gave it to him, he’ll pluck it from wherever he stored it in that brain of his and call you. He’s not a fan of texting.”
Braxton will be pissed when he calls only to find out I blocked his number. I shrug. “If I avoid him long enough, he’ll move on to something, or someone, else and forget about me.”
“Braxton holds a grudge like no one’s business.”
Grudge or not, I’m not ready to speak with Braxton. I hurt him, and he hurt me. I live with the scars on my body. He’s in prison because of me. Nothing we do or say can take my scars away or give him back time with his family.
“If he calls, you’ll be the first to know.” She won’t be. I handle my own problems and have since my mother died.
“No keeping secrets?”
I blink. “No keeping secrets.” That’s all I’ve been doing for as long as I can remember. I kept secrets for my mom. For Ty, before he came out as bisexual. Carlos and I had a secret relationship. The word secret defines my life, and I’m not sure how I feel about that.
“He gets out in six weeks, Ever.” Gwen looks straight into my eyes, like she can see into my soul.
My heart rate spikes, and I will myself to take calm, even breaths. “When did you find out?” I’m not prepared to face Braxton.
“On my way here.”
Something or someone across the field catches her attention. We both look. It’s Midnight and Dare walking across the parking lot. They get into Midnight’s car and drive off. The distraction is short-lived, and we return to talking about a past I don’t like being brought into the open. A conversation is as open as it gets.
I avoid talking about the accident for a reason. When it comes up, I remember seeing Gwen sitting alongside her family in the courtroom with wide eyes and a strangled “No” erupting from her mouth when the judge sentenced Braxton to five years in prison.
She’d begged the judge to show leniency, that Braxton wasn’t a danger, and he’d done this before without anyone getting hurt. The judge looked in my direction with a stern expression and didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to. Sitting in a wheelchair, I was proof that Braxton caused harm.
With everyone’s attention suddenly on me, I dropped my head and cried. Imagine my surprise when I glanced up from unpacking in my dorm room to say hi to my roommate and looked into blueberry-blue eyes. Awkward didn’t come close to what I felt. Shame and regret overshadowed my hope and excitement as I began my first year of college.
