“Because I knew her.”
The words sat between us.
Heavy.
Regan looked toward the balcony again, but I had the feeling she wasn’t seeing the ocean anymore.
She was seeing firelight.
Desert.
A girl she used to be.
A man she had never stopped loving.
“I wanted Edge the minute I saw him,” she said quietly.
My chest pulled tight.
Regan laughed once, but there was no humor in it. “I know how that sounds. Dramatic. Stupid. Like something girls tell themselves because they don’t know the difference between love and a man looking at them like they matter.”
I didn’t breathe.
“I was crashing a bonfire party,” she continued. “No one knew I was Tarak’s little sister. I wasn’t supposed to be there. I knew that, but I was young and angry and determined to prove nobody owned me.”
Something about that made my skin prickle.
Young and angry.
Determined to prove nobody owned me.
I understood that too well.
“There was peyote going around,” Regan said. “Or what someone claimed was peyote. It was laced with something. Something harder. Something dirty.”
Her eyes came back to mine.
“So, yeah. You’re real familiar now with what drugged and helpless feels like.”
My stomach tightened.
Regan’s gaze softened immediately.
“I hate that for you,” she said. “I hate that you know what I mean.”
I looked down.
“What happened?”
“I was laying under the stars, talking to them like they were going to answer me.” Her mouth trembled faintly. “I was hating your mother. Hating the fact that I loved?—”
She stopped.
Then shook her head.
“No. That’s not true. I didn’t love him yet. Not really. I saw him. That was all. I saw Edge across that fire, and something in me just… knew.”
I couldn’t picture Edge young.
