That was bad.
That was worse than bad.
That was the kind of thing men wrote songs about before somebody ended up dead.
“Stay awake,” I said.
“I don’t want to.”
“I didn’t ask.”
A faint line appeared between her brows. “Bossy.”
“Bleeding girls don’t get a vote.”
“Almost eighteen.”
My jaw tightened.
There it was.
The line.
The reminder.
The warning.
Almost.
Not there.
Not mine.
Never mine if I wanted to keep breathing and, more importantly, if I wanted to keep honor from rotting out of me completely.
“Then almost listen,” I said.
She made the smallest sound. Maybe amusement. Maybe pain.
I moved fast, keeping low, cutting away from the main clearing toward the darker trail Nate and I had come down. Behind us, chaos swallowed the desert. Kids shouted over each other. Doors slammed. Tires spun. Somewhere, glass popped under heat. Firelight licked the sky while emergency lights strobed red-blue through smoke.
It looked like a war zone built out of rich kids’ bad decisions.
Nate caught up on my left, breathing hard.
“Bike’s out of sight,” he said. “For now. Tracks are a mess anyway with everyone running around.”
“Call Prez.”
“Already did.”
“What’d you say?”
“That we found a complication.”
I looked at him.
He grimaced. “Fine. I said we found a nuclear complication.”
