My body knew before my mind did.
I turned.
Three guys stood near the edge of the sidewalk, all sunburned confidence and expensive casual clothes. Two girls hovered behind them, pretending not to enjoy the moment too much. I recognized one of the boys vaguely from Santa Fe.Not someone who had mattered enough to remember clearly. A cousin of one of those girls. A brother. A hanger-on from that world of money and cruelty and parents who thought consequences were things that happened to other people.
His eyes dropped to my ring.
Then to my face.
His smile sharpened.
“Didn’t expect to see Mandy’s daughter out here without her big bad biker daddy.”
Lily went still beside me.
The night tilted.
For one second, I was back at a grave with red paint on my hands.
Then I lifted my chin.
Because I was not that girl anymore.
Or maybe I was.
Maybe the point was that she had survived long enough to become me.
“Keep walking,” I said.
The boy laughed.
And behind my calm, something old woke up with teeth.
The boy laughed.
Not because I was funny.
Because boys like him had been raised to believe girls like me were supposed to shake when they said no.
He took one step closer, and the street noise around us seemed to dull. Music still played somewhere behind him. Cars still moved along the road. People still laughed outside restaurants with string lights and waitlists and overpriced guacamole.
But my body narrowed the world to him.
His smile.
His friends.
The way his gaze touched the turquoise ring on my finger, like even that belonged to something he had a right to mock.
“Keep walking,” I said again.
Lily shifted beside me.
She was small compared to him. Five-four on a good day if her sneakers had the right soles. Thick glasses sliding down her nose. A canvas tote over one shoulder with a half-finished pharmacology packet sticking out of it because Lily believed downtime was a myth invented by weak students.
She did not look intimidating.
That was usually people’s first mistake.
