That was another reason I needed to go to Texas. Even not having seen Austin in over a decade, he knew me better than anyone else in my life.
The need to escape the constant prying eyes clashed with my need to finally be seen, sending mixed signals to my brain. It was par for the course. Something inside me was broken.
I shuffled forward to let the flight agent scan my paper ticket. Her eyes widened slightly as if she recognized me, and I was gripped by panic. Was she going to say something? Was she going to ask me why I was a failure? Why I’d ruined everything?
But she didn’t say anything.
Autopilot kicked in, propelling me down the flimsy jetbridge. I ducked my head as I crammed my massive body through the door of the plane.
I had flying down to a science. Window seat. First class. Headphones so no one would talk to me. Dramamine so I didn’t vomit on whatever unlucky son of a bitch sat next to me.
Fuck, I was really doing this.
Soon, the pale pink of the Minnesota dawn would give way to the bright baby blue of the Texas sky.
It’d been years since I set foot in the little town of Whynot.
But just like the name,why notrun away from all my problems?Why notgo back to the one place that had been both my hell and heaven?
Why not go home?
CHAPTER ONE
Avery
My face was stained blue.
“Oh. My. God.”
I’d really done it this time.
I snatched a wad of makeup wipes out of the package and furiously scrubbed my cheeks and forehead until my skin looked like a cooked lobster.
Oh god. It’s not coming off.
“Fuck me.”
My jaw dropped at the horror of my appearance.
It was my fault for attempting to color my own hair. My chestnut waves were a frizzy pain in the ass half of the time, so after a bad week, I thought it would befunto attempt to turn them—what did the package say?—anime blue.
I was a painter after all, right? Couldn’t be that hard to apply some hair dye.
Wrong. Now my hair was still the same shade of Whynot family brown, and I looked like I’d fucked a Smurf.
A string of curses flowed from my mouth in an unladylike manner that would have had my mother choking on her iced sweet tea. Although after twenty-six years of fighting me tooth and nail, she’d partially given up on turning me into the perfectdaughter. I took too much after Dad, and since he passed, she’d stopped hating me so much.
Small comforts. It was too bad it took him dying for her to love me.
Oof. That thought stung a little too much and so I tossed it away like a dirty pair of jeans. I planted my hands on my hips and stared at myself in the mirror.
What the hell was I going to do?
Panic was setting in. I wouldn’t be blue forever, right? The dye had to come offsomehow.
The good news was that I owned an art studio, so I was always covered in acrylic splatters of color. No one would notice . . . probably.
I picked my phone up and frantically searched how to get hair dye off my skin. I fanned myself with the flattened box ofanime blueas sweat pooled in my pits.
