Chapter 6 #2
I felt protective of her in a way that scared me sometimes.
Not because Lily was weak. She was not weak.
She was soft, which people mistook for the same thing until she opened her mouth and politely cut them at the knees.
But she was innocent in ways I had never been.
She trusted the world to be weird instead of cruel.
She believed most people were doing their best unless proven otherwise.
I believed most people were carrying knives behind their backs unless proven otherwise.
Somehow, between us, we balanced.
I had only gone home once.
Christmas at Cal’s ranch.
Apparently, Christmas had become Cal’s ranch because he was a bachelor with the best house, the best kitchen, the biggest fireplace, and enough land for everyone to spread out without killing each other before dessert.
He complained about it constantly, which everyone ignored because he secretly loved every second of having the place full.
Regan and Skye had decided Cal needed a woman.
Cal disagreed.
Loudly.
Frequently.
With increasing irritation.
That only made them more determined.
Every time some pretty friend of a friend “happened” to show up for dinner, Cal’s face got darker until even Edge started enjoying it.
“You’re next,” Regan told him while arranging candles like she was not actively ruining his peace.
“I am not next,” Cal growled.
Skye smiled sweetly. “You need someone.”
“I need everyone out of my house.”
“That’s fear talking,” Regan said.
“That’s my mouth talking.”
I laughed from the couch with a mug of cocoa in my hands, wrapped in a blanket, watching him glower at everyone like a grumpy bear someone had forced into a Hallmark movie.
Cal looked at me. “You think this is funny?”
“Yes.”
His face softened just enough to give him away.
He had a soft spot for me.
He tried to hide it. Failed badly.
He made sure I had the best room. He stocked the kitchen with the tea I liked. He put extra blankets in the den because he remembered I got cold. When I thanked him, he grunted like gratitude was an inconvenience, then asked if my car was running right.
That was Cal love.
Sienna was there too.
She said hello.
That was progress.
She was still pissed about the burned cactus plants and soil samples.
Fair. I had learned more about desert habitat restoration over one awkward Christmas dinner than I had ever expected to know.
But she didn’t glare at me the whole time, and when she passed me the rolls, she said, “You look healthy.”
From Sienna, that felt like forgiveness with citations pending.
River had locked down the MC side of things as much as anyone could.
The worst of the blowback had been handled.
JD had buried people in legal threats, social consequences, and enough polished old-money pressure to make country club families lose sleep.
The rich girls who thought they could ruin me had discovered that group chats, videos, Snapchats, and grave cameras were not as erasable as they believed.
But memories in places like Santa Fe were short and long at the same time.
Short when it came to facts.
Long when it came to gossip.
People forgot what really happened. They remembered what felt satisfying to repeat.
So it was better for me to stay in California.
Better to start over in Los Angeles, where everyone was too obsessed with their own reinvention to care much about mine.
That was what I told myself.
Most days, I believed it.
Some days, I didn’t.
Some days, usually when I was driving alone down Pacific Coast Highway with the windows cracked and the ocean flashing silver beside me, I thought about Cabo.
The palm tree.
The outdoor shower.
The diamonds in my ears and Dylan’s mother-of-pearl cuff sliding cool around my wrist.
I did not wear the cuff every day.
That would have been pathetic.
I wore it more than I admitted.
Usually hidden under long sleeves. Sometimes on nights when Lily and I went out and I wanted to feel braver than I was. Sometimes when I had a bad dream. Sometimes when a date with a perfectly nice boy left me feeling lonely in a way being alone never did.
I tried dating.
Of course I did.
Lily made me.
Regan encouraged it in that careful, casual way that was not casual at all.
Edge did not encourage it, but he also didn’t threaten anyone directly, which I assumed counted as growth.
Tarak asked for names, addresses, vehicle information, and blood types.
I told him no. He said he could find them anyway. I believed him.
The boys were fine.
That was the problem.
Fine boys with clean shoes and clean hands and futures their parents had framed before they turned five.
Pepperdine boys. USC boys. A Stanford pre-law guy who used words like networking and legacy without irony.
A UCLA med student who brought me flowers and talked for forty minutes about his MCAT score.
They were nice.
Some were funny.
Some were handsome.
One was a genuinely good kisser.
None of them made me feel anything close to the way Dylan had made me feel with one kiss at my mother’s grave.
That was embarrassing.
I knew it was.
I had been eighteen. Barely. Fresh from trauma. Raw from grief. Dylan had found me in the fire, washed red paint off my hands, called me Beautiful when I felt like a headline written in blood. Of course my brain had turned him into something bigger than he was.
First rescue.
First safe kiss.
First man who wanted me and still stepped back.
I told myself it was imprinting.
A crush.
A first taste of romance sharpened by danger.
Not love.
Never love.
Love took time. Love took knowing someone’s breakfast order and bad habits and how they acted when they were bored on a Tuesday. Love was not a silver cuff and a goodbye under palm leaves. Love was not a man vanishing back to San Diego while leaving his name written in the margins of your life.
So I tried to move on.
I built a life.
Classes. Clinicals. Matcha runs. Cupcake. Concerts. Lily. Christmas at Cal’s. Phone calls with Regan. Short, awkward, softening conversations with Edge. Texts from Tarak that said things like Lock your doors and Eat protein.
I became someone.
A real someone.
Not just Mandy’s daughter.
Not just Edge’s daughter.
Not just the girl from the fire.
Destiny.
That was the point.
That was the story I had promised my mother’s grave I would write.
Then, one Friday night in Santa Monica, the past found me anyway.
Lily and I were out with two girls from our program, celebrating the end of a brutal clinical rotation with overpriced tacos and matcha lattes because apparently caffeine after dinner was how nursing students flirted with disaster.
I wore a black dress, boots, my mother’s diamonds, my mother’s turquoise ring, and Dylan’s cuff tucked under the sleeve of my denim jacket where no one could see it but me.
The air smelled like ocean, car exhaust, perfume, and fried food. Street musicians played near the promenade. Girls in tiny dresses laughed outside bars. Tourists drifted in slow clusters. Everything was bright and loud and normal.
I was laughing at something Lily said about Cupcake having “emotional landlord energy” when I heard a voice behind me.
“Well, look who it is.”
My body knew before my mind did.
I turned.
Three guys stood near the edge of the sidewalk, all sunburned confidence and expensive casual clothes.
Two girls hovered behind them, pretending not to enjoy the moment too much.
I recognized one of the boys vaguely from Santa Fe.
Not someone who had mattered enough to remember clearly.
A cousin of one of those girls. A brother.
A hanger-on from that world of money and cruelty and parents who thought consequences were things that happened to other people.
His eyes dropped to my ring.
Then to my face.
His smile sharpened.
“Didn’t expect to see Mandy’s daughter out here without her big bad biker daddy.”
Lily went still beside me.
The night tilted.
For one second, I was back at a grave with red paint on my hands.
Then I lifted my chin.
Because I was not that girl anymore.
Or maybe I was.
Maybe the point was that she had survived long enough to become me.
“Keep walking,” I said.
The boy laughed.
And behind my calm, something old woke up with teeth.
The boy laughed.
Not because I was funny.
Because boys like him had been raised to believe girls like me were supposed to shake when they said no.
He took one step closer, and the street noise around us seemed to dull. Music still played somewhere behind him. Cars still moved along the road. People still laughed outside restaurants with string lights and waitlists and overpriced guacamole.
But my body narrowed the world to him.
His smile.
His friends.
The way his gaze touched the turquoise ring on my finger, like even that belonged to something he had a right to mock.
“Keep walking,” I said again.
Lily shifted beside me.
She was small compared to him. Five-four on a good day if her sneakers had the right soles. Thick glasses sliding down her nose. A canvas tote over one shoulder with a half-finished pharmacology packet sticking out of it because Lily believed downtime was a myth invented by weak students.
She did not look intimidating.
That was usually people’s first mistake.
The boy’s eyes flicked to her. “Who’s this? Your emotional support nerd?”
Lily blinked at him. “That’s rich coming from a man whose shirt collar is actively trying to escape his personality.”
One of the girls behind him snorted before she could stop herself.
His face tightened.
I almost smiled.
Almost.
“Cute,” he said. “You get mouthy out here, Destiny? California make you brave?”
“No,” I said. “Leaving Santa Fe did.”
His smile sharpened again.
The name came to me then.
Brett.
Brett Harrison.