JD glanced at them before looking back at me. “If this gets in front of a local jury, and I mean a real local jury, not a country-club dinner table, the story changes. Rich girls bullying a Native Arizona girl with biker ties over her dead mother until she broke? That doesn’t play as cleanly for them as they think it does.”
My heart pounded.
“They’ll say I’m crazy.”
“Maybe.”
I flinched.
JD did not look away.
“They’ll say you had a psychological break,” he said. “That may help legally.”
“No.”
The word came out too fast.
Regan turned toward me. “Destiny?—”
“No.” Panic rose cold and vicious. “No. I can’t do that. I can’t plead crazy. I can’t sit in a room while lawyers say I’m unstable like my mother. I can’t let them say Destiny really is the stripper-name biker whore’s daughter who went crazy just like everyone knew she would.”
My breath came faster.
The IV tugged when I shifted.
“I can’t,” I said again, and this time it broke. “I’d rather face consequences than let them make Mandy’s ghost the whole story. I need a fresh start. I need to go somewhere nobody knows me. I need to not be this forever.”
Regan’s eyes filled.
Edge looked destroyed.
I turned to JD because if I looked at them too long, I would fall apart completely.
“Does this mean college is over?” I asked.
The room went very quiet.
My voice got smaller.
“Nursing school. Is that gone now?”
JD’s face changed.
For the first time since he entered, he looked less like a strategist and more like a man with a heart he’d rather keep out of business.
“I wanted to be a nurse,” I said, and tears slipped down both sides of my face now. No stopping them. No pride left. “I wanted clean halls and anatomy books and people who didn’t know Mandy. I wanted to help people. I wanted one thing that was mine.”
Regan made a soft sobbing sound.
“I really messed up tonight,” I whispered. “Mom.”
The word came out before I could catch it.
Mom.
Not Regan.
Not stepmom.
