I took notes in economics.
I smiled at Sister Margaret.
I turned in my final English essay.
I ignored the whispers in the hallway, the giggles, the way someone had taped a dollar bill to my locker with my name written across it in red lipstick.
I took the dollar.
Folded it.
Put it in my pocket too.
Evidence, maybe.
Or fuel.
By final period, my anger had cooled into something better.
A plan.
The Royal Bastards clubhouse sat outside town behind gates, dust, and enough unspoken threat to keep most sane people away. I got home before Edge because he had a meeting at the garage. Regan’s SUV was gone too, probably at the shop or running errands for three different people who would never admit they depended on her.
For once, nobody was watching the front door.
The house was quiet when I slipped inside.
Too quiet.
The kind of quiet that made bad ideas sound reasonable.
I went straight to my room and stripped out of the Desert Saints uniform piece by piece. Blazer. Blouse. Skirt. Knee socks. All of it landed on the floor like shed skin.
In the mirror, I looked at myself for a long time.
Almost eighteen.
That phrase had become a locked gate.
Almost old enough.
Almost free.
Almost allowed.
Almost trusted.
My birthday was in two weeks. Graduation was in nine days. Nursing school orientation was in August.
Nursing school.
That was the dream I kept folded inside me where nobody could stain it.
I wanted clean halls and steady hands. I wanted anatomy textbooks, clinical hours, night shifts, and the kind of exhaustion that came from saving people instead of surviving them. I wanted to learn how to stitch wounds without needing to know who caused them. I wanted to be useful in a way that belonged to me.
Mostly, I wanted space.
College was not just college.
