Double Dared

Prologue

TRUEN

Looking back, it’s hard to know the exact moment childhood ends, and everything after begins. Sometimes it’s quiet, like sand slipping through your fingers. Or it can be loud, like a door slamming shut.

For me, it was neither.

It was a whisper in the dark.

It was my best friend grinning in the glow of my night-light, not realizing he’d already lit the fuse.

We were thirteen, lying awake the night before the party that would change everything. Dare was sprawled sideways across my bed, arms flung wide like he owned the room, or like he owned me, though neither of us knew it yet.

“Tomorrow’s gonna be epic,” he said, too wired to sleep. “Everyone will be there. Maybe we’ll even get dared to kiss someone.”

I remember the way my stomach clenched so hard it hurt. I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to stand in a crowded living room while a stupid bottle spun and told me who I was supposed to want. But Dare was going, and I would’ve followed him into fire if he’d asked.

Then he said casually, carelessly, not knowing it would live in my head for years afterward, “What if we kiss tomorrow?” He raised his head, finding my eyes in the darkness. “Our first kiss.”

My heart stopped. Long enough to imagine it. Long enough to hope. For one perfect, terrifying second, I thought he meant me. That maybe he felt the same sharp, impossible thing thrumming under his skin. But Dare kept talking, rolling right past the landmine he’d dropped in my chest.

“I mean, not us,” he added quickly, snorting. “Like, with girls. You know how they are with those games. Spin the bottle, seven minutes in heaven… all that.”

Girls. My stomach cramped so hard I had to press my fist against it. I didn’t want to kiss girls. I didn’t want to kiss anyone, except maybe him.

“You never know who that bottle could land on,” Dare said, his voice dipping low, like the night had swallowed up his bravado. “Could be anyone.”

I remember thinking, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if it were him.

In the dark, his hand found mine. Just a brush of fingers, a thoughtless thing. But it felt deliberate. It felt dangerous. “Something big’s coming, Tru,” he whispered. “Something life-changing. I can feel it. Can’t you?”

I could. I just didn’t know it would be the end of everything we were, and the start of everything we’d become.