“Andy. There’s no need to threaten her. She’ll come.” Mom steps closer, brushing back her dark hair so like mine and stepping between us and doing her best to soothe things. Like she always does when Dad thinks my autonomy is stepping over the line.
Her hand smooths down my shoulder, but my muscles clamp down even harder.
Mom’s not the reason I didn’t come home. She’s the reason I struggled not to.
“Better to face the town all in one go and get it over with. Right, honey?”
I suck in a slow breath, ready to crawl out of my skin if I don’t get away in the next minute.
“You know how this town is.”
Oh, I more than knew. They tore me down so completely once, that I’m betting they don’t hold back this time.
Dad lets out a frustrated huff, his brown eyes narrowed at me. “Who knew Daisy would turn out to be our good daughter.”
His disappointment hits hard. I burst out the back door at the low blow. No, I’m not perfect.
I should have never had the expectations of being perfect, but I tried. The moment I wanted something for myself, though, my world blew up in my face.
Dad’s words follow me:embarrassment, fiasco.
“She was always a good girl until that boy got ahold of her.”
“Don’t talk like that.”
I shake it off, activating the motion sensor as I slink around to hide between my parents’ house and the Kincaids’.
It takes me a few tries to light the joint. Even though it’s legal now, I don’t have a lot of experience smoking.
Once or twice when I was taking courses in the city, a friend would pass one my way, but I never sought it out.
Now, I need the distraction. Something to calm me down. And this seems better than the Vallum I know Mom has hidden away in her bathroom cabinet.
Smoke burns in my lungs as soon as I get it properly started. Smothering my coughs, I take another hit and look up at the stars twinkling in the sky.
I couldn’t do this in the city. It’s one of things I missed while I was gone.
If I really wanted, I could have just taken a trip out of the city limits, but I didn’t need to see them as much, as they’re a perk of being home.
Maybe one of the few I left behind.
The crunching of boots in layers of snow doesn’t stir me from the mesmerizing stars until siding creaks across from me. My gaze swings down to Gabe. My neighbor. My friend.
Probably the only one I have left.
He leans against the side of his house, across from me.
The boots are the same, dark and scuffed and sturdy. Like him. T
he faded blue jeans and black leather jacket are also the same.
His neck tattoo is new, an intricate pattern that I can’t see the details of from here, but it spans across his entire throat.
Blonde hair falls into his golden-brown eyes as he stares back at me, cataloging the differences and similarities from the last time we saw each other. What does he see?
Do I still look like the teen who ran away?
He doesn’t look as young as he did six years ago.
