Chapter 1 #4
“And I’m going to walk in wearing leather, on Edge Rourke’s bike, with my real friends behind me, and I’m going to watch every single one of those rich little saints choke on my name.”
Tris’s mouth slowly curved.
Jake pointed at her. “Don’t encourage this.”
“I’m not.”
“You’re smiling like you’re about to.”
“I’m supporting women.”
“You’re supporting felonies.”
“Not yet,” I said.
Jake looked at me. “That word is doing a lot of work.”
I kicked the bike back into gear.
Tris whooped.
Jake cursed under his breath and climbed into the truck.
And for a while, with the desert opening wide in front of us and the last light burning gold across the road, it felt perfect.
It felt like freedom.
That was how bad decisions got their claws in you.
They didn’t feel bad at first.
They felt like breathing after years underwater.
The bonfire was already raging when we got there.
Not a little campfire. Not some modest circle of seniors roasting marshmallows and pretending they respected tradition.
No, Desert Saints Prep did even rebellion expensively.
They had dragged half a dead tree into the middle of the clearing and built a fire big enough to signal aircraft.
Trucks circled the party in a loose ring, headlights glowing, tailgates down, coolers open, music thudding across the desert.
The girls wore denim skirts and white boots.
The boys wore hats they hadn’t earned and belt buckles big enough to compensate for entire personalities.
And Brielle Carson stood near the fire beside her brand-new white Bronco, laughing with her head tipped back like the world existed to admire the line of her throat.
The Bronco was ridiculous.
Lifted. Shiny. Custom everything. A graduation present, probably, because girls like Brielle got forty-thousand-dollar apologies for having to attend school with people beneath them.
I rolled in slow.
Not because I meant to be dramatic.
Fine. Mostly because I meant to be dramatic.
The bike’s engine cut through the music like a blade. Heads turned one by one. Laughter thinned. Someone lowered a red cup. Someone else said my name, but not like a joke this time.
Destiny.
There it was.
My name moving through the crowd.
Not soft. Not pretty.
A warning.
Tris and Jake pulled in behind me, their truck coughing dust into the headlights. Tris jumped out first, all grin and sharp eyes. Jake got out slower, scanning the party like he was already choosing the best escape route.
Smart boy.
I swung off the bike and took my time removing the helmet I had absolutely not worn correctly and only remembered at the last second. My hair spilled loose around my shoulders. The leather jacket caught firelight. My boots hit the dirt.
For once, nobody laughed.
Brielle stared.
Her mouth opened slightly, then closed.
I walked toward her.
The crowd made room, which was new and delicious.
Addison whispered something behind her hand. Mia looked nervous. Paige looked sick. The boys near the cooler watched me with bright, stupid interest, like cruelty hadn’t been fun anymore now that the punchline had teeth.
Brielle recovered first.
Of course she did.
“Well,” she said, lifting her cup. “If it isn’t Destiny.”
I smiled. “That’s my name.”
Her eyes flicked to the bike, then to my jacket, then to Tris and Jake. “Cute entrance.”
“Thanks. I dressed for the theme.”
“There isn’t a theme.”
“Sure there is.” I stepped closer. “Rich kids pretending to be dangerous.”
A few people laughed.
Not at me.
Brielle’s eyes sharpened.
Good.
Her gaze dragged over me, meaner now. “Borrowed the jacket from your mother’s closet?”
The fire cracked behind me.
Something in my chest cracked with it.
Tris moved, but Jake caught her wrist.
I kept smiling.
“No,” I said. “Mandy’s dead, remember? You printed enough photos. I figured you’d know that part.”
The laughter died fast.
Brielle’s cheeks flushed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Liar.”
Her boyfriend stepped forward. Carter something. Rich, tan, boring. He had been one of the boys by the fountain with his phone out.
“Maybe calm down,” he said.
I looked at him. “Maybe choke.”
A chorus of oooohs rolled through the crowd because apparently even private school seniors became middle-schoolers when drama got good.
Carter’s jaw tightened. “You always this trashy, or is it just tonight?”
There it was.
The word.
The one they all wanted.
Trash.
Biker trash. Club trash. Mandy trash. Rourke trash.
It should’ve hurt.
Instead, it rang somewhere inside me like a starting bell.
I laughed.
“Only for special occasions.”
Then I walked past him, straight to the cooler, and grabbed a bottle of tequila so expensive I didn’t recognize the label. Someone protested. I ignored them, twisted the cap, and drank.
It burned all the way down.
Good.
I drank again.
Tris appeared at my side. “Slow down.”
“No.”
“Des.”
“I’m celebrating.”
“What?”
I looked out at the fire, the cars, the beautiful cruel faces, the desert waiting beyond the headlights.
“My reputation.”
For the next hour, I became exactly what they had accused me of being.
Loud.
Wild.
Mean when I needed to be.
I danced too close to the fire with Tris.
I drank from bottles passed through hands I didn’t trust. I laughed when Brielle stared.
I let the boys look and gave them nothing.
I smiled like a dare. I told Addison her extensions looked tired.
I told Carter he had the emotional depth of a puddle in July.
I told Mia she could stop laughing at jokes she didn’t think were funny and maybe grow a spine before college.
People started filming.
Of course they did.
At first, I loved it.
Let them film.
Let them capture Destiny Rourke rising from the ashes of every ugly thing they’d said when they thought I was too ashamed to answer.
Then someone passed me a blunt.
I should have said no.
That’s the part that matters.
I knew better. I was reckless, not stupid.
I knew better than to take something from a hand I didn’t recognize, knew better than to trust party weed from a crowd that wanted me humiliated on camera by Monday morning.
But the bottle had made the stars too bright, the music too soft around the edges, the fire too beautiful, and my anger too big to fit inside my skin.
“What’s in it?” Jake asked sharply from somewhere behind me.
A boy laughed. “Relax, man. It’s just strong.”
Tris reached for it. “Destiny, don’t.”
I took one hit.
Bitter.
Wrong.
Too sharp in my throat, too chemical under the smoke. Someone laughed and said something about desert medicine. Someone else joked about snow. The words scattered before I could catch them.
The world tilted.
Not all at once.
At first, everything just got brighter.
The fire breathed.
The stars moved.
The music stretched like taffy, slowing and speeding, slipping in and out of my bones. Faces blurred at the edges. Brielle’s laugh became the scrape of metal. The desert pulsed red beneath my boots.
Tris grabbed my arm. “Hey. Look at me.”
I looked at her, but her face wouldn’t stay still.
Jake appeared beside her. “What did you take?”
“I’m fine.”
My voice sounded far away.
“You’re not fine,” he said.
“I’m Destiny.”
The second I said it, something inside me opened.
Destiny.
My name.
My curse.
My joke.
My inheritance.
My mother had named me like she knew one day I would have to become something people feared. Not loved. Not understood. Feared.
Maybe that was the truth no one wanted to tell me.
Maybe blood did remember.
Maybe Mandy hadn’t died in that crash. Maybe she had curled up somewhere inside me, waiting for the right night, the right fire, the right cruel little girl with a shiny white Bronco and a mouth full of my mother’s sins.
I turned toward the flames.
They leaned toward me.
I swear they did.
Red and gold and hungry, licking at the sky like they knew my name too.
“Des,” Tris said, voice trembling now. “You’re scaring me.”
I smiled at the fire.
“They wanted a show.”
Jake cursed. “We’re leaving.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
He grabbed my wrist.
I yanked away so hard I stumbled, laughing when the world swung sideways and came back in pieces. The crowd was watching again. Phones up. Mouths open. Brielle near her Bronco, pretending she wasn’t nervous.
Good.
She should be nervous.
They all should.
I bent and picked up a burning branch from the edge of the bonfire.
Someone screamed.
Not a real scream yet.
A party scream. A nervous one. The kind girls made when they wanted attention but not consequences.
The branch was heavier than I expected, fire crawling along one end, sparks lifting into the night. Heat bit my palm through nothing but stupidity and adrenaline. Pain flashed, then vanished under the roar in my blood.
“Destiny, put it down!” Jake shouted.
But his voice came from underwater.
The fire was talking louder.
My mother was laughing.
No.
I was laughing.
I walked toward Brielle’s Bronco.
Her eyes went huge. “What are you doing?”
I tilted my head.
For one second, I saw her exactly as she was. Not powerful. Not perfect. Just a mean girl with rich parents, pretty hair, and no idea what it cost to poke at wounds she didn’t understand.
Then the second split open.
Mandy’s face flashed over hers.
Then mine.
Then fire.
“Didn’t you want Mandy’s daughter?” I asked.
Brielle backed up. “You’re crazy.”
The word hit like a kiss.
Crazy.
There it was.
The thing everyone had been waiting for me to become.
I moved in a blur after that.
Not thought.
Not plan.
Just rage with hands.
The burning branch struck metal. Someone lunged. Someone missed. A flash caught, then another, firelight jumping where it should not have been, spilling wrong and fast and wild across the shiny white perfection of Brielle’s graduation gift.
The world held its breath.
Then the night exploded.
Sound punched the sky.