Not the girl who had looked pissed when I left with college girls and tried to pretend she didn’t care.
Not even the girl on the hill with tears on her cheeks and moonlight in her hair.
No.
The ghost that would haunt my soul forever was the girl from the desert.
Fire behind her.
Smoke in the air.
Dark hair tangled, long and wild, tumbling around a face too young to hold that much damage.
Crimson blood on her lips.
Scratches on her skin.
Prickers caught in her hair.
And those haunted eyes looking at me like she had already seen hell and was waiting to find out whether I had come to drag her back or carry her out.
That was the Destiny I saw when sleep finally pulled me under.
Not perfect.
Not safe.
Not mine.
Never mine.
Just alive.
And somehow, that had been enough to ruin me.
CHAPTER 5
DESTINY
Regan refusedto tell me where we were going.
That should have been my first warning.
She came into my room that morning with sunglasses on her head, a white linen cover-up thrown over one arm, and a smile so smug I immediately trusted nothing about it. The ocean wind pushed through my open balcony doors, lifting the curtains and carrying in the smell of salt, sunscreen, and rich people pretending they had never had problems in their lives.
“Happy birthday,” she said, way too brightly. “Get up.”
I pulled the sheet higher. “No.”
“You don’t even know what I’m asking.”
“You’re smiling like a criminal.”
“I married into crime. There’s a difference.”
I cracked one eye open. “There is absolutely not.”
Regan set a breakfast tray on the side table and started moving around my room like a woman with a schedule, which meant arguing was probably going to waste more energy than obeying. She opened the closet, pulled out the teal swimsuit I had been avoiding because it looked like it had been designed by someone with a personal grudge against my composure, and tossed it onto the bed.
