“Natchoz, California,” he said proudly. “Town center.”
“Did he say nachos?” Miranda whispered, half giggling, half yawning. “Think we could find some?”
Doubtful. Harper took another look at the “town center.” Aside from the gas station, there was a small shack whose sign read only CAFÉ and … that was about it. She was used to lame small towns—being born and bred in Grace, CA, lameness capital of the world, it kind of came with the territory. But this wasn’t a town, it was a live-in trash heap with its own mailbox.
Leroy filled up their tank, never taking his eyes off Harper’s chest. “That’ll be forty-seven bucks, ladies,” he finally said, hanging up the nozzle. Harper looked at Miranda; taking her cue, Miranda whipped out a credit card. “No can do.” Leroy chuckled. “The machine’s busted.”
“You can’t fix it?” Miranda asked anxiously.
Now the chuckle turned into a roar. “Machine’s been busted since 1997. You girls got cash?”
Miranda darted her eyes toward Harper and gave her head a quick shake. Translation: They were totally screwed. Harper’s wallet, as usual, was empty; she’d been counting on Kane to front her the cash for the Vegas adventure, and Miranda’s credit card to get them through the journey.
So now what?
They could make a run for it—hop in the car and drive away before Leroy knew what hit him.
Or—
“You girls ain’t got the cash, I’m thinking you could make it up to me another way,” Leroy said, giving them a nasty grin. “In trade.”
Holy shit.
Beth couldn’t stop staring at the bed. She snuck a glance at Reed—he was watching it too.
Her mother thought she was spending the weekend at a friend’s house—which showed how little her parents knew of her life these days. She was out of friends. Reed was all she had left. If he disappeared …
She refused to let herself think about it. But she still couldn’t avoid looking at the bed.
Reed had never pushed her, never pressured her, never expected her to move faster than she was comfortable with or go further than she was ready to go. Not like Adam, who’d pretended he would wait forever—but only waited until a better offer came along. And not like Kane, who never wanted to take no for an answer, and who made Beth feel like a con artist, promising something that she was never intending to deliver.
Why did everything always come down to sex?
Reed was different from other guys in a lot of ways, but Beth wasn’t stupid. He was still a guy. And sooner or later, he would surely want to know: When? And then: Why not?
She couldn’t avoid it forever. And now, here, the bed filling up half the room, she suspected she couldn’t avoid it at all.
“Why don’t you guys scope out the casino?” Reed suggested. He shot Beth an easy to interpret look: Let’s ditch these losers, and we can finally be alone. Part of her couldn’t wait—but part of her, as always, was afraid.
“Dude, we have to get ready for tomorrow,” Fish pointed out.
“You want to rehearse?” Reed asked incredulously, glancing at the clock. The Blind Monkeys almost never rehearsed—it was one of the reasons they sucked. (Not the only reason, of course: Fish’s near total lack of rhythm and Hale’s tendency to forget what he was doing in the middle of a song helped too.) “Now?”
“Not rehearse,” Fish said, a lopsided grin spreading across his face. “Prepare.”
Hale got it instantly. They were tuned in to the same wavelength. Or, more accurately, tuned out. “Gotta prepare the mind, dude,” he said, digging for something in his backpack. “Get in the zone.”
He pulled out the bong. Fish whipped out a lighter and cocked his head at Beth and Reed. “You in?”
“I don’t know,” Reed hedged. “Maybe we should—”
“We’re in,” Beth interrupted. She plopped down on the edge of the bed and tugged Reed down next to her. She could tell he wanted to get away from the guys—and probably the bong, too. Ever since they’d started dating. Reed had been cutting back on the pot. Way back.
But no matter: Once she’d discovered that one or two puffs of the miracle drug would crush her doubts, calm her terrors, and clear her head, Beth had been more than happy to pick up his slack. She reached for the bong and, like an old pro, inhaled deeply, savoring the burn.
Along with Reed, this was the only thing that had allowed her to make it through the last couple months. This feeling of lightness and freedom, so different from the suffocating guilt and shame that always threatened to crush her. She needed the escape—and if Reed ever found out why, he would leave her, which made her terror absolute.
Fish reached for the bong, but she held tight and, violating etiquette and caution, inhaled another deep lungful. It would be a long weekend—and she needed all the help she could get.
“Now, this is more like it,” Harper gushed as they turned onto the Strip. “Civilization. Thank God.”
“Mmm-hmmm.”
“Okay, how much longer are you going to give me the silent treatment?” Harper asked, exasperated. “I already told you I was sorry. How was I supposed to know that you’d find—”
“Don’t say it!” Miranda shrieked. “I’m trying to block it out of my mind forever.”
“Okay, okay. How was I supposed to know you’d find that thing in the sink. I only volunteered to take the toilet because I thought it would be the grosser job, and it is your birthday weekend, after all.”
“Celebrate good times,” Miranda deadpanned, and suddenly, in sync, they both burst into laughter. “Did all that really happen?” Miranda sputtered through her giggles. “Or was it just some joint hallucination?”
“I’m not hallucinating the smell,” Harper gasped, waving her hands under Miranda’s nose. “I washed them ten times back there, and they still stink.”
Miranda wiggled away, trying to focus on the road. “Don’t talk to me about smells,” she groaned. “It’ll just remind me of—”
“Don’t even go there,” Harper cautioned her. “You’re going to make us both sick.”
“Again.”
It had turned out that paying for the gas “in trade” had meant helping Larry and his half-toothless wife clean up the “café.” It had sustained a fair amount of damage during some kind of brawl earlier that evening: truckers versus motorcyclers, with a few local ranchers thrown in for fun. Harper and Miranda had been charged with cleaning the bathroom: It wasn’t pretty.
Now safely back in civilization, with its lights, non-toxic air, and toilets complete with modern, functional plumbing, they shook with hysterical laughter, and Harper closed her eyes, soaking in the moment. It may have been the most disgusting night of her life, but things between the two of them were actually starting to feel back to normal. There was a time when Harper had feared they would never be close again, mostly because of the things she’d done and said—and all the things she couldn’t bring herself to say. I’m sorry. I need you. For years, Harper and Miranda had told each other everything. But now Harper was harboring a secret, and Miranda couldn’t ever find out the truth. Harper had to stay silent and guarded, always wondering how it was possible that life could go on, day after day, totally normal, that the people around her could smile and laugh like they didn’t know the whole thing could come crashing down at any moment, crushing them all.
Harper had to act like nothing was wrong, like she had forgotten what she had done. She had to pretend that she was as confident and carefree as ever, and hide her terror—and her guilt—from everyone. Even Miranda. Especially Miranda, who knew her the best.
How were they supposed to rebuild a friendship with such a massive lie lodged between them? Harper had almost given up hope. But somehow, they’d found their way back to their bickering, bantering norm, and that meant that the long ride, the many detours, and the adventures in raw sewage had all been worth it.
Well, almost.
When they finally found the hotel, they pulled in
to the lot without registering much of the medieval tackiness of the garish white tower. It was nearly two in the morning, and they could focus on only two things: a hot shower and a soft bed. Both were now, finally, in reach.
They checked in, ignoring all the other Haven High seniors who littered the hallway—it seemed half the school had hit Vegas for the long weekend, and they were all staying at the Camelot, less for its bargain basement prices than for its widely renowned attitude toward its underage denizens: Don’t ask, don’t tell.
Usually Harper would have lingered amongst the admiring crowd; she never let a moment in the public spotlight go by without putting on a suitable show. But the fewer people who saw—and smelled—her in this state, the better. The girls trekked down a dingy hallway and arrived in front of room 57. Harper swung the door open to discover a small, squalid room with two full-size beds and little else. Miranda immediately dropped down on the one closest to the door, stretching her arms with a satisfied purr. “I could fall asleep right here, right now.”
“Perfect, because I call the first shower,” Harper said. She dumped her bag and rushed to the bathroom before Miranda could object. She could feel the stink and filth crawling over her skin and needed to scrub it away before she could enjoy the fact that she was finally, after a lifetime of waiting, spending the weekend in Las Vegas.
And after nearly drowning in misery for three months, she planned to enjoy the moment as much as humanly possible.
She opened the door of the bathroom, stepped inside—and screamed.
chapter
2
Adam grabbed a towel and tried to cover himself, but it was too late. Harper had seen everything. Every tan, muscled, gleaming inch of him. She felt faint, and it was all she could do not to lunge across the bathroom and sweep him into her arms, perfect body and all. But she forced herself to stop, and remember: She and Adam were no longer best friends, as they’d been for half their lives. They were no longer in love—lovers, she told herself, her mind lingering on the word—as they’d been for too short a time. They were … nothing. And she intended to treat him as such.
“What the hell are you doing in our room?” she snapped, trying to regain her equilibrium. Don’t look at his chest, she told herself. Don’t look at his shoulders. Don’t look at his arms. Don’t look … This was maybe not the most effective strategy.
“Your room?” Adam tugged the towel tighter around himself and took a step forward, as if to escape the bathroom—which would mean his half-naked body brushing right past Harper’s, a fact he seemed to realize just in time. He stopped. “This is our room. We checked in hours ago!”
“And ’we’ would be …?”
“Me. Kane. We. Our room.”
And then it all made sense. “Very funny, Geary,” she muttered to herself. “Very cute.” When Kane had offered to pay for her and Miranda’s room for the weekend, Harper had figured it was just an uncharacteristically gallant gesture, an extravagant birthday present for Miranda. (And not that extravagant: According to the website, rooms at the Camelot went for sixty bucks a night.) She should have known better.
“Harper, look,” Adam began, “since you’re here, maybe we can—”
“I’m out of here,” Harper snapped. Why couldn’t Adam just give it up? He couldn’t get that if he didn’t want a relationship with her, she wasn’t about to accept his friendship as a consolation prize. Not when she knew what he really thought of her. But he just wouldn’t take no for an answer, and kept forcing her into these painful state of the union talks. As if she didn’t want him in her life, desperately. As if it didn’t kill her to remember all the things he’d said when he’d broken her heart, how he hated her, how he could never trust her again, all because she’d made a few not-so-tiny mistakes. And then his belated and halfhearted offer of forgiveness, just because of the accident, just because she’d gotten hurt and Kaia had—
No. She’d resolved not to think about any of that this weekend. She was taking a vacation from her pain and her guilt and everything else that had been weighing her down. Kane knew that, and was still pulling this crap? Unacceptable.
But she should have known better than to expect even a brief escape from Adam. Only one thing would make him give up the fight. If he ever found out what she had done to Kaia, Harper knew that would be the end of it. Of everything. And she wasn’t ready for that; all the more reason to get away.
She backed out of the bathroom and, without a word of explanation to Miranda, rushed out of the hotel room in search of her target.
“Harper, wait!” Adam called down the hallway. She glanced over her shoulder and, sure enough, he was standing in the hall in only a towel, flagging her down. She didn’t stop—but grinned to herself when she realized that he’d let the door slam and lock behind him.
Just before reaching the elevator, she heard a loud thud and a shouted curse.
Apparently he’d realized it too.
Kane sighed and, reluctantly, tore himself away from the stunning blonde to answer his ringing phone. He allowed Harper about thirty seconds of ranting before cutting her off. “I’ll meet you in the lobby in five,” he promised, snapping the phone shut before she had a chance to respond. He had been expecting her call and, though the face-off could easily be avoided for hours, he preferred to get all potential interruptions out of the way now. The blonde could wait.
This weekend was too important, and his plans too delicate, to risk interference from a wild card like Harper. And from the sound of it, she was about to get pretty wild.
“What the hell were you thinking?” she raged, as soon as he came into sight.
“Nice to see you, too, Grace,” Kane said dryly, spreading out on one of the Camelot’s threadbare couches. The pattern had likely once been intended to resemble a medieval tapestry, but now it just looked like Technicolor puke. “Have a good drive?”
“Lovely, thanks for asking.” As if the sarcasm had sapped all her energy, she sank into a chair beside him. “Seriously, Kane, what’s the deal?”
“The deal with …?”
“Adam? In my room? Taking a shower? Any of this ringing a bell?”
Kane smiled innocently. “Adam’s up in our room—yours, mine, his. Ours. Think of it as one big happy family.”
“And it didn’t occur to you to mention that this was the plan?”
Kane shrugged. “Did you think I was going to pay for two hotel rooms? I’m not a bank, Grace.”
“I—” Her mouth snapped shut, and he knew why. Given that he was footing the bill for the trip, it would be pretty tacky of her to complain about the lodgings. And Harper Grace was never tacky. “I just would have liked some advance notice, that’s all,” she said sullenly. “You didn’t have to ambush me.”
“If I’d told you ahead of time, you wouldn’t have come,” Kane pointed out. Adam and Harper had been feuding for a month now, and Kane was getting sick of it. Not because he felt some goody-two-shoes need to play peacemaker, he told himself. Just because there weren’t too many people whose presence he could tolerate; it was troublesome when they refused to share breathing room.
“What do you want me to do?” she asked, a hint of a whine entering her voice. “Make nice and pretend like nothing ever happened between us? Not gonna happen.”
“Not my problem, Grace,” Kane told her. “Talk to him, don’t talk to him, I don’t care.” Not much, at least. “But this is the only room you’ve got, so unless you don’t plan on sleeping or bathing this weekend—and, no offense, but I think you’re already overdue on the latter—you should probably get used to it.”
“But—”
“Gotta go,” he said quickly, bouncing off the couch. “The most beautiful blonde in all the land is waiting for her knight in shining armor to arrive. I’m hoping to show up first.” He wiggled his eyebrows at her, and, miracle of miracles, she cracked a smile. “Now, your mission, and you have no choice but to accept it: Chill out, shower, then grab Miranda and meet me down her
e in one hour. We’re going out.”
Harper checked her watch and rolled her eyes. “Geary, it’s the middle of the night, and some of us have been on the road for an eternity.”
Kane shook his head. “Grace, this is Vegas.” Why was he the only person capable of understanding the concept? “Night doesn’t exist here. It’s a nonstop party, and we’re already late.”
“I don’t know …”
“Since when does Harper Grace turn down a party?”
He knew perfectly well since when. That was why he’d insisted she come this weekend and why he’d dragged Adam along for the ride. Harper had been on the sidelines long enough—it was time for her to get back into the game. Whether she wanted to or not.
It was good pot—strong, smooth, decently pure—but not good enough to help Beth sleep through Fish and Hale’s impromptu jam session. (Featuring Hale’s off-key humming and Fish banging Beth’s hairbrush against the wall for a drumbeat.) After an hour of tossing and turning, she finally gave up on trying to sleep—only to discover that Reed was wide awake, lying on his side and staring at her.
“What?” she asked, giggling at the goofy expression on his face.
“Nothing.” He gave her a secretive smile, then a kiss. “Let’s get out of here.”
Still clad in her T-shirt and purple pajama shorts, she crawled out of bed and followed him out the door. They headed downstairs in search of the pool, running into half the Haven High senior class on their way.
Beth didn’t care who saw her or how she looked. Only one person’s opinion mattered to her these days, and only one person’s presence made any difference.
Make that two.
Beth saw her first, and tried to dart down a hallway before they were spotted, but it was too late.
“Well, this is just great,” Harper said, lightly smacking her forehead. “As if my weekend weren’t perfect enough.”
Just ignore her, Beth told herself. She didn’t want to get into any more fights with Harper—and not just because she always lost. Yes, Harper had done her best to ruin Beth’s life—but Beth’s attempt at revenge had nearly succeeded in ruining Harper, permanently. Just as she would always bear the guilt for Kaia’s death—Don’t think about that, she reminded herself—she would always know that Harper could just as easily have been the one who’d died. Harper was the one who’d landed in the hospital, gone through painful rehabilitation, emerged pale, withdrawn, and the object of too much curiosity and not a little scorn. They were more than even, although Harper would never—could never—know it.