Probably Edge.
Probably the beginning of the end of my life as I knew it.
I didn’t look.
I kicked up the stand, turned the bike toward the road, and let the throttle answer for me.
Dust flew behind me as I shot down the driveway.
For the first time all day, nobody laughed.
Nobody whispered.
Nobody said my name like it was a joke.
The desert swallowed me whole, hot wind tearing through my hair, leather tight across my shoulders, Edge Rourke’s bike growling between my thighs like a beast I had no right to ride.
Maybe that was the point.
Maybe tonight I wasn’t asking permission.
Maybe tonight I wasn’t hiding behind an Arizona name, a school uniform, or the careful silence everyone mistook for weakness.
Tonight, I was Destiny.
Not the stripper name.
Not Mandy’s mistake.
Not Edge’s secret.
Destiny Rourke.
And those spoiled little saints at the bonfire were about to learn exactly what kind of girl they had been stupid enough to set on fire.
By the time I reached the edge of town, my hands were shaking so hard I had to pull over behind an old feed store and breathe.
Not because I regretted taking the bike.
Not yet.
Regret required distance. Regret required sense. Regret required the kind of good judgment I had left somewhere between Brielle’s smirk and the dollar bill taped to my locker.
Edge’s bike rumbled beneath me, alive and furious, like it knew it had been stolen and couldn’t decide if it respected me for it or wanted to throw me into the desert for my arrogance. My thighs trembled from holding it steady. My heart beat too fast. The wind had whipped my hair into a wild black curtain around my face, and when I looked at my reflection in the dark glass of the feed store window, I didn’t see the girl from Desert Saints Prep.
I didn’t see the quiet almost-graduate with straight A’s, nursing school acceptance folded in her desk drawer, and a future she had been protecting like a candle cupped between both hands.
I saw trouble.
I saw leather, dark eyes, red mouth, smudged liner, and a smile that looked too much like all the old photographs people kept dragging into the light.
For one second, I saw Mandy.
My stomach twisted.
“No,” I whispered.
The bike growled under me.
