“Thank you, June. I can’t wait to see it.”
The group moves like a pack, boots and denim and loud voices filling the hallway. A few students flatten themselvesagainst the lockers to let the biker parade pass. Evan keeps his hand on my lower back as we walk, steady, possessive without being a jerk about it. Like he’s anchoring me.
When we reach the parking lot, the bikes are there, lined up like a military convoy. The sound of them starting is thunder in my bones, familiar and comforting now instead of frightening. I drive my beat-up truck to the bar, while Evan rides beside me on his bike with June behind him.
We end up back at The Noble Fir and there’s a party waiting for me. Food everywhere — a buffet of snacks, cupcakes, and barbecue. Drinks that I thankfully don’t have to make. Music blaring from the jukebox.
I lose myself in the party. Smiling, holding onto Evan, and dancing.
Until my phone pings. And I freeze.
Evan notices instantly. “What is it?”
He watches with concern as I pull my phone out with fingers that suddenly don’t work right. It takes three tries to unlock my phone and four to open my email.
It’s from my professor.
Final Grades have been posted for ACC 101
I stop breathing as I click open the email and the attachment.
A single line loads.
A-
For a second, my vision blurs. I just stare at the thing, reading it three times and wondering if this is what it feels like to have an aneurysm. Then a laugh rips out of me.
Evan’s face changes. He knows. He can read me like a damn book.
“You did it,” he says softly.
“… I got an A-minus.”
June squeals and hugs me around the middle like I’m her sister now, like I belong. Evan steps in close, cupping my facecarefully, thumb brushing away some silly tear that’s leaking from my eye —where the hell did that thing come from— and he looks at that tear like it’s precious.
“I told you,” he murmurs. “You’re so much better than you give yourself credit for.”
I lean into his touch, letting myself have this. Letting myself be held up instead of holding everything alone. Letting him in, even more.
I’m not just surviving anymore, fighting to keep the world and all its heartache out while I make it through another day. No, I’m building.
I look up at Evan and smile. “You better not ever let me forget this.”
“Never,” he says. “Not for a second.”
Epilogue - June
June
Molly's truck smells like bar soap and gunpowder and something warm underneath — vanilla, maybe, or cinnamon — and I decide that smell is what safety feels like.
I'm wedged between Evan and the passenger door, which isn't comfortable by any objective measure. His shoulder is still healing, and every time Molly takes a corner, I feel him brace against the pain he won't admit to. I've been watching him do that my whole life — absorb damage and call it fine. The difference now is that when he does it, Molly reaches over without looking and puts her hand on his knee, and something in his whole body settles.
I've never seen him settle before.
I look out the window so they can't see my face, because I'm smiling like an idiot and I don't want to ruin the cool, quiet version of myself I've been trying to project since Ironwood Falls took me in. The town slides past in amber streetlight and wet pavement, small and strange and nothing like Salem, nothing like anywhere I've ever called home. It doesn't feel like nothing, though. It feels like something I don't have a word for yet.
"You okay back there, Junebug?" Evan asks.
