Three weeks after what became known as the Day of the Goo, I awoke to the sound of saws and nail guns blasting outside my window. Stomping out, I found a McCabe & Sons Construction crew working on the inn.

“What the hell is going on?” I yelled at one of the guys.

“Ask the boss man,” he yelled back, motioning toward Mike McCabe himself.

I strode across the green lawn to the inn’s parking lot. Mike leaned over his work truck, his hands splayed out on the hood, a large document spread out in front of him.

“What is this, Mike?” I demanded before I was even halfway across the lawn, knowing he could hear me with his shifter senses.

He glanced over at me, then immediately dropped his gaze. I didn’t care that I was dressed only in a tank and short sleep shorts. I’d worn less to work in Atlanta, and it had finally warmed up enough to at least be under the covers in them. But he was of a different generation, the gray sprinkled in his brown hair and the crinkles by his eyes evidence—although some of his weather-beaten look was a direct result of working outside for so many years.

“What is what?” he asked, his voice low as he continued studying what I realized were plans for the inn. The same plans Everett Weston had asked Graysin to deliver to me months ago. Plans that I’d had to put to the side until I found a way to pay for them all.

“First of all, what are you doing here?” I asked, softening my voice. “You shouldn’t be working. I’m really sorry about—”

“Work provides a distraction,” he growled, and I could tell by his tone he didn’t want to discuss his recent loss. My heart hurt for him. He’d been through so much lately with Braden, Reeve, and Aster, and although I didn’t have kids of my own, I just couldn’t imagine how he and his wife were coping. “Besides, the world doesn’t stop turning, even when it feels like it ought to. We have jobs to do. I’m just checking in on this one, getting it going before I go back to the library site.”

“But this isn’t a job,” I argued. “I haven’t hired you for anything more than the roof, and you finished that a while ago.”

Actually, I’d only hired him to repair the roof, but he’d gone and replaced the entire thing, saying it needed to be done. Of course, he’d been right. It’d needed a whole new roof pretty badly. I just hadn’t had the money for it. He only charged me for the few patches I’d originally contracted for, though, saying the rest was covered.

“Well, let’s see.” He pulled out a stack of rolled up papers from his back jeans pocket. “I have a bid here. All of it based on Everett’s plans. You remember that?”

I glanced at the paperwork. “Yeah. And I remember telling you that I couldn’t do all of that right now. Only the absolute necessities.”

“Well, see, right here I have a copy of full payment. It’s all taken care of. Including the newly added tasks of a permanent repair to the hole in the turret and redoing all the glass in the conservatory.”

I practically tore that piece of paper out of his hands. My jaw dropped at first. The bid had been to repair, replace, and/or restore any of the inn’s exterior that needed it, from siding to the gingerbread trim to windows, as well as to prep and paint the entire outside. Nearly ten thousand dollars’ worth of work. Except for the fairly recent issues with the turret, most of the work was cosmetic in nature and I couldn’t yet afford to address it. But here was a copy of a cashier’s check for the entire amount and then some.

“There’s a deposit on there for interior work,” Mike clarified. “Hear you have some issues inside your walls. We should inspect every wall. Spiders could be the least of your worries. And we can replace plumbing and electrical while we’re in there, and bring it all up to code. According to what I’m told, it’s all taken care of.”

“How . . . ? Who . . . ?” My eyes narrowed. My nostrils flared. “Oh no, he didn’t!”

“Yeah, he did,” came an unmistakable voice from behind me.

I spun to find Xandru approaching with a cup bearing Coffee Haven’s logo. Despite the indignation bursting at my seams, I couldn’t help my smile. We hadn’t seen each other for over a week, and even then, only a few minutes here and there since our last failed attempt at a date on the Day of the Goo.

He held the cup out to me. “Good morning.”

Mike gave him a strange look before going back to work. He’d probably been up for many hours, like normal people. I wasn’t normal. Of course, he wasn’t either, but I supposed mountain lion shifters weren’t nocturnal.

“Good morning,” I said giddily, taking the cup.

Xandru walked back to the cottage with me as I sipped the delicious coffee.

“You know how I feel about this,” I said.

“The coffee?”

“The money.”

“Mmm.”

“Mmm? That’s all you can say?”

He shrugged.

“I can’t take it. I wouldn’t take yours, and I can’t take any more of his. He’s already paid off the inn’s mortgages and everything else. He can’t keep doing this,” I ranted.

“You won’t change his mind,” he countered as we climbed the steps to the front door. “And stop trying. Tase has done a lot of bad shit, Kales. This is his way of making up for everything he’s done to you and your whole family, and it’s something to make him feel good about life. He needs that right now.”

“Hmph,” I grunted, opening the door.

“Do it for me?” He closed the door after we entered and leaned against it, lowering his chin and looking up at me through his thick, dark lashes. He surely knew by now what that look, those eyes, did to me.

I punched his arm lightly. “Stop it. That’s not fair.”

His gaze swept down my body, over my thin tank top and short shorts, lingering on my breasts and the tops of my thighs. His finger slid under the strap of my tank, the light touch sending goosebumps over my skin.

“And this is fair?” he asked, his voice husky. He tugged on the strap, pulling me up against him. He must have felt my hard nipples, because he gave me a cocky smirk. “I think you missed me.”

I pressed my hips in, feeling him arouse under the pressure. “I think you missed me, too.”

“Possibly.” He leaned down, his full lips brushing over mine.

Morning breath.

Coffee.

I stepped back and clamped my hand over my mouth. “I need to brush my teeth.”

He chuckled as I hurried for the bathroom. When I came back out, feeling more human—well, as human as a vampire can feel—I found him sound asleep on my couch. I sat beside him, about to wake him up, but stopped and studied his face. His sharp cheek bones and square jaw could have made him a pretty boy, especially with the stunning eyes now hidden behind closed lids, but he had a rugged look to him, rather than beautiful. Especially now. My thumb lightly caressed the purple circles under his eyes, then my fingers brushed over the dark beard that had grown beyond his usual summertime stubble over the last week. I hadn’t seen him look so relaxed since I’d been back, and still, even in sleep, his forehead creased with worry.

I didn’t know anything about the several one- and two-day trips out of town he’d been taking with Tase, only that it was absolutely necessary that his brother didn’t go alone. Xandru refused to tell me more than that. But whatever the reasons had been, they obviously had not been mini-vacations. This wasn’t the haggard face of too much partying. This was the gauntness of too much work, the wariness of constant and unending stress and worry. I wondered when he’d last slept and decided not to wake him.

He was still asleep after I showered—which said a lot. We’d tried to seize every opportunity that presented itself to be together, but they had been few and far between. Of course, for a while in the beginning, as my memories returned and everything about my parents—what they’d done, their deaths—had settled in, I’d been emotionally unavailable. Since then, we could hardly find more than a few moments at a time to be alone. It’d been four months now, and we still hadn’t made love.

We’d done pretty much everything else, but we’d promised each other that our first time back together wouldn’t be frantic, rushed, and meaningless. He wanted to do right by me, and I wanted it to be right, but that was in the beginning. We hadn’t realized we’d be bogged down with work and family issues, and that days would turn into weeks and weeks into months. And now I didn’t know if our expectations had been built up so high that we were afraid of disappointment . . . or if it just didn’t matter enough anymore.

Don’t think like that, Kaela, I reprimanded myself. But I couldn’t help it, especially when he hadn’t even stirred while I’d showered. We were like an old married couple, except we never got the engagement or the wedding or the honeymoon. And I was too young to be old, damn it.

I slipped outside and strode across the lawn to begin my day at the inn. When I took my place at the front desk, I noticed Mammie in front of the parlor picture window, watching all the hubbub of town square across the way.

“They’re doing it all wrong,” she said, a look of longing on her face as city workers and volunteers set up for the Fourth of July festivities tomorrow. “They should have done this weeks ago! Where are the lamppost decorations? The red, white, and blue twinkle lights? This town needs its twinkle lights. That Rose Howe has no idea what she’s doing. Why did they let her take over? You should have had the committee meeting here, Michaela, so I could have had input.”

“I’m sure it will be fine, Mammie,” I muttered while glancing over our expected guests for the night—all two of them. I hoped they didn’t mind the unanticipated construction zone.

“Oh, there’s Adelaide. She’ll straighten them out.” Still, Mammie wrung her hands as she floated back and forth in front of the window.

My aunt, aka Madame Luiza, aka Mammie, had passed four months ago, right after I’d first come back to Havenwood Falls on a weirdly arranged job offer at the inn. She’d returned in this new form, her silver hair in a bun and wearing the purple ball gown I’d dressed her in before she died—but a little less solid than she’d been before. Her death had been the last in a string of deaths in our family, including my parents, leaving Gabe, Aurelia, and myself on our own. Mammie couldn’t bear to leave us quite yet, for which I was grateful. Surprised as hell the first time we saw her, but incredibly grateful. I wasn’t quite prepared for what it would mean to finish raising two teens while simultaneously trying to save the family business that was over a century and a half old and on the verge of bankruptcy.

Although I knew her worry for us was the real reason Mammie visited our realm, she claimed she came to help the business. She was a marketing ploy.

“Looks like our efforts last night worked,” I said to her as I read the comment card left by today’s departing guest.

“Only because of you,” she said, distracted. “He was a tough nut, wasn’t he?”

“Oh, he’s experienced. He wrote, ‘I’ve been to several hotels and inns in Colorado that claim to be haunted, but this is the real deal. Watch for the woman in the purple gown. She particularly likes windows. Besides an incident involving my backside, she seems harmless enough, but there is something more sinister that lurks in the shadows. I felt like it might want to eat me.’ Ha! We did it! But what does he mean about his backside?”

Mammie looked over at me with a coy smile. “I’m dead. It’s time I start living.”

I sucked in a breath. “What did you do?”

She patted her hair. “Oh, well, I might have pinched his butt.”

“Mammie!” I squeaked as laughter bubbled up.

“The dead don’t need to be proper. I’ve decided I wasted my life being good, and look where that got me. Just as dead as the ones who had all the fun.” She shrugged. “Now it’s my turn. And it gives the guests more to talk about.”

Mammie served as the resident haunter of Whisper Falls Inn, scaring guests (or, apparently, sexually assaulting them) just enough to thrill them into leaving enthusiastic reviews. The memory wards surrounding the town meant tourists never remembered visiting Havenwood Falls once they left, so we had to capture their excitement to paper before their departures. For really tough customers, like this guy, I vamped out in dark corners or reflective surfaces, leaving them to question what they saw, but with a spike of fear flowing in their blood. Nobody could accuse us of false advertising. In fact, we were more authentic than most.

“What is Adelaide doing? She’s walking right past them all and not saying a word.” Mammie let out a sigh, before turning and giving up her post at the window. The guy was right about her liking windows, particularly one on the top floor in the far back of the inn. She stared out it, but at what, I wasn’t quite sure, because it looked upon the back of the row of businesses on Main Street and the alley that ran behind it. “The mail came, dear. Maybe while you’re out there—”

“I’m not going to tell those people how to do their jobs, Mammie.” I walked around the front desk and headed for the door.

“Somebody needs to!”

Snickering, I hurried out to collect the mail, then sighed as I ruffled through the envelopes on my way back inside. Bills, bills, and more bills.

Tase had paid off the mortgage, and Mammie’s hauntings had helped to keep the inn afloat, but we were still in deep. The inn had fallen into some disrepair over the last several years, thus the need for all of the work. Our current services were only the basics—besides our outdated guest rooms, we offered muffins, scones, and coffee provided by Coffee Haven each morning and that was pretty much it. Our kitchen needed to be completely redone, and the dining room needed updates. I could have tended the bar, but without diners in the restaurant or overnight guests, we had no reason—nor funds—to keep it stocked.

Mom and Mammie had been unable to keep up with everything after Dad’s death, and Mammie had an especially hard time after Mom passed. But the inn’s misfortune had started even before Dad died, when Tase bought the ski resort. He’d been engaging in shenanigans with a witch to draw out-of-town visitors to the resort’s new cabins and simultaneously drive our business into the ground. He’d almost succeeded.

He claimed to have seen the evil in his ways and changed. Possibly because he had a death sentence hanging over his head. Maybe because he actually felt real guilt for everything he’d done to our family. I wasn’t sure it was possible for Tase Roca to feel anything at all, but it explained why every single bill in today’s pile—and every day’s pile—was marked “Paid in Full.” Along with McCabe’s and Weston Design’s invoices.

“Looks like that boy’s not going to give up.” Mammie looked over my shoulder, near enough that her cold breath sent a chill down my spine.

“He’s pretty damn persistent.”

“Good. Let him be. We need to bring in more guests, Michaela. There’s nothing more to it. That boy owes us. He and his father. Let him pay their debts.”

I didn’t reply as I left the front desk area for the back office to drop the invoices on my desk. She wasn’t wrong about needing more guests, but more guests meant we needed all of our rooms not just habitable, but comfortable and nice, and our dining room and bar functional. Which meant I needed the work to be done if I ever wanted to earn enough money to pay for the work that needed to be done. Without Tase’s help, we were between a rock and a hard place.

I really hated letting Tase Roca get his way, though. Everything wrong in my life was about him getting his own way, including everything wrong between Xandru and me.

“Isn’t it coffee time with Adelaide?” Mammie asked, as I came back to the front desk. “It looked like she headed to Coffee Haven.”

I glanced at the clock. Addie had been my best friend since preschool, and we had a standing coffee date—whenever we could both get away, anyway. “Yeah, I guess it is.”

“Talk to her, will you, dear? She’ll tell those men how to do their jobs.”

“Yeah, sure. If Xandru comes in, tell him where I am.”

The sun was actually, finally warm as I crossed the front lawn of the inn that sat on a diagonal facing the corner and Town Square Park across the intersection. Once I crossed Eleventh Street, though, the Main Street buildings threw shade onto the sidewalk, and it was still a little chilly for my thin blood. It’d probably be a year or two before I adjusted from Hotlanta to the mountain climate. At least once I passed Callie’s Consignments and crossed the alley, I was back in the sun, where I found Addie sitting at an outside table at Coffee Haven.

She wore a black tank top, displaying the tattoos that covered her arms, cutoff jean shorts, and purple Chuck Taylors. A bandana covered her head, her brown hair snaking out of the bottom in two braids. Round sunglasses had replaced her regular eyeglasses. She hunched over the small book she carried with her everywhere, two cups on the metal table in front of her.

“I didn’t know you BuJo’d,” I said as I took a seat and a cup.

She looked up at me. “I what?”

“Bullet journaled?” I motioned at her book, the pages filled with writing and drawings in a colorful array. “Or is that a Happy Planner? I’m not quite sure about the difference.”

“What the hell is a bullet journal or Happy Planner?” she demanded.

“Um . . . that. Sindi had them, too.”

“Sindi? You mean the other Addie?”

I laughed. Sindi was my old roommate in Atlanta, and while I’d been there, she’d been my best friend. It was kind of funny how similar she and Addie were, although it made sense. I supposed they were my “type” for besties.

“Don’t worry, nobody could ever replace my Bratty Addie,” I cooed as I reached over to tweak her nose. She slapped my hand away. I gestured at her notebook again. “Anyway, Sindi would never admit it, but she was a planner freak, and she loved her BuJo. She planned out her days, used them as a journal, and tracked all her crap, from when to change the water filter to the last time she had sex and with who. She had all these stickers and tapes and a gazillion markers and pencils for her color-coding system. I even caught her using Pinterest to pin all these elaborate, artsy layouts.” I laughed at the memory of her flushed face when I teased her about it. “I’ll admit, I’ve been tempted to start one myself to keep track of everything going on. At least give myself the illusion that I have my shit together.”

One side of Addie’s lip curled up, as if she were appalled by the whole idea. Then she leaned forward and hissed, “This is my Book of Shadows.”

I stared at her.

“My grimoire.” She huffed out a breath at my ignorance and leaned even closer, whispering, “My spell book, you idiot.”

“Ohhh,” I drawled out. Then I whispered back, “Your magic BuJo.”

She threw a piece of scone at me. I caught it and popped it in my mouth. Aster McCabe may not have been around here anymore, but her scone recipe remained. And her scones were not something to be wasted. In fact, doing so felt like an affront to her memory.

“Still no news on your skinwalker, which is really pissing the Court off,” Addie said. “Some of them are worried we won’t be able to detect it if it’s wearing someone’s skin who’s already registered and known by the wards.”

“Is that possible?”

“You gave us,” she wrinkled her nose, the stone piercing twinkling in the light, “tissue samples. That should be enough for the coven to track it if it were in town.”

“So, you think it left?”

“I don’t know. These things are skeevy as hell. But we can hope, right?” She took a sip from her cup, eyeing me over the rim. “So, speaking of the Court . . .”

I made a face and blew out a sigh. As the Court’s business manager, Addie had apparently been given the job of persuading me to claim the moroi seat, because it came up nearly every time we saw each other. “After what they did to the McCabes, I don’t know that I want to be a part of that.”

“Maybe you could have changed the outcome.”

I lifted an eyebrow.

“Okay, probably not,” she admitted. “We do have laws in this town. If you don’t want your seat, though, you’ll have to give it up to a Roca. And you know what that means.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know.”

Saundra, Addie’s grandmother and one of the leaders of the Luna Coven as well as the Beaumonts’ member of the Court, had already explained it to me.

The Petrans—my father, specifically—had always held the Court seat for the moroi vampires, since the very beginning, because at the time, the Rocas had been my family’s servants. When my father passed a couple of years ago, there had been a huge uproar by the Rocas, who hadn’t been servants for over a century, because the seat was offered to my mother instead of Mr. Roca. That’s how all seats were passed along, from family member to family member. But Mr. Roca was, among other things, a misogynistic and self-righteous ass, and thought he deserved the seat rather than my mother.

Then again, I couldn’t entirely blame him. After all, the Rocas had never had any true say in things in our little town. My father had always spoken for all of the moroi, and I doubted he consulted the Rocas before making any decisions with the Court. When Mom passed, Mammie took the seat. Now it was meant to be mine.

If I didn’t want to claim my place on the Court, I could offer it to another moroi vampire. And since my siblings were minors, that meant one of the Rocas. I’d honestly considered offering it to Xandru. Since I’d been gone for over five years, he had a much better understanding than I did of the town’s secrets and things that went on beneath the surface. But Xandru wasn’t the eldest of his family.

Tase could rightfully dispute the offer, and since he was unpredictable these days, we couldn’t take the chance. The only way to guarantee he didn’t get the seat and Xandru did was to prove to the Court that Tase was incapable of fulfilling the duties of the position. And while that might have been true, we didn’t want to go that far yet with Tase, especially with the Court. That would have meant giving up hope on him, and not even I was at that point. Even if I were, I couldn’t do that to Xandru.

Or to Addie, who’d never give up on him, even if her love was unrequited.

I gnawed on my bottom lip as Addie drummed her fingers on the table’s edge while studying me.

“You’re not ready for the commitment, are you?” she asked.

“What?”

“To the town,” she clarified, then she cocked her head. “To Xandru?”

I shook my head. “What are you talking about?”

She leaned forward, resting her arms on the table. “Kales, I love you. You’re like a sister to me, and I missed you so much while you were gone. We all did. But I get it. You didn’t even remember us, so you couldn’t possibly have missed us.”

“But now that I’m here and I remember—”

“It’s not the same, is it?”

I sucked in my lip and chewed even harder on it, as feelings I didn’t realize I’d been harboring stirred within.

“You’re not the same,” she said pointedly.

“What do you mean?”

She smiled, and although I couldn’t see her eyes, I could sense the sadness in them. “You’ve had a big taste of life outside this sleepy little town. Big city life. You’re different.”

I leaned forward, too. “You really think so?”

“I don’t think so. I know so. You’re . . . darker. Less confident than you used to be. More hesitant. The old you would have been the one to BoJu or whatever you called it, because you always had so much going on, and you loved organizing and color-coding. The old you was the bubbly and social one, while I was the weird, awkward, and ugly best friend. The old you always dove headfirst into whatever crazy idea we came up with. We were practically fearless together.” She dropped her voice to a soft whisper. “And the old you wouldn’t have gone this long without jumping into bed with the man she loves.”

I frowned. “That’s not all me. To be honest, I don’t think Xandru likes me anymore. Not in the same way.”

Addie spluttered on her coffee. “Oh, trust me. I don’t think that’s an issue.”

“I don’t know . . . I mean, sometimes I wonder how he can even look at me.” I dropped my voice to a whisper as guilt flooded through me. “I killed his parents.”

“He doesn’t blame you for that,” she said softly.

“Not out loud.”

“Kales, I’m sure that’s not an issue, either. Not for Xandru.”

I exhaled slowly. “Well, there definitely is an issue. It’s just . . .” I couldn’t finish my thought, not sure what words to give it.

“This life is not what the two of you had always planned and daydreamed about before,” she finished for me. “It’s not the vision you’d created in your sweet and innocent minds.”

I slumped back in my chair. “No, it’s not,” I admitted. “Maybe it is me. Maybe it’s everything I’ve been through.”

“It’s getting to you both. He’s been through a lot, too. He lost his world when you left.”

“I know. We both did. I left this town as a young girl who didn’t know half of what was going on behind all the pretty lights and small-town charm. I came back after having my life ripped away from me. Twice.” Once when my parents sent me away with my memories wiped, and once when my gene was triggered, turning me. “And even now . . .”

I swallowed against the lump in my throat. Addie was my best friend, and I should have been able to say anything to her. But what I was thinking felt almost like a betrayal. One I couldn’t bring myself to say aloud.

But she could. “Even now you feel like this life has been forced on you.”

“How did you know?”

She shrugged. “I would have felt the same way. After everything you’ve been through, it’s not surprising. You came back to a life you didn’t remember, only to have two kids and a failing business dumped in your lap. And while you and Xandru always seemed to be meant for each other, that was before.”

“Before I changed.”

“Before both of you did. Before shit happened. Before you both let fear get in your way.”

“I’m not afraid of anything,” I protested automatically. She lifted a brow.

I twisted my hair around my finger. The backs of my eyeballs pricked, but I refused to tear up. Her hand landed on my forearm, and she gave it a squeeze.

“Nobody would blame you if you took off, you know. I’d hate you, but I wouldn’t blame you.”

“I can’t.”

“You can. If that’s what you really wanted.”

“I couldn’t do that to Aurelia and Gabe. They need me . . . The inn does, too.”

“The town would rally around them and make sure they were taken care of. Or you could take them with you. Let them see the world before their genes are triggered. Are you going to trigger them?”

I blew out a breath. “I haven’t even thought that far ahead. It’s not like anybody’s at risk if I don’t.”

Normally, if the moroi gene wasn’t triggered by age twenty-one, the whole bloodline before them would begin to age and die like a human. But there was nobody left before us, no previous generations at risk. And if my siblings’ genes weren’t triggered, they’d continue life as humans, having children with dormant genes that didn’t have to be triggered. That was the life my parents had tried to make for me, before Tase turned me.

“You could take them far from here and let them lead the normal life you were supposed to have,” Addie said. “Get away from all the craziness of this town.”

“Are you trying to get rid of me?”

“I’m trying to point out that you have options, Kales. You don’t have to feel like this is all forced onto you. You can choose this life. I mean, it’s kind of like what you’d always wanted, just a little twisted up. Or you can choose something else. And it’s about damn time my girl was allowed to choose for herself. Wouldn’t you say?”

I looked up and behind her, at the mountain rising high into the sky, a tiny bit of snow left on the tallest peaks. We were surrounded by magnificent beauty in this little box canyon of ours. But there was a whole world out there beyond.

I’d been happy out there before. Sort of.

I’d been happy here. Once upon a time.

“What about Xandru?” I whispered.

Addie gave my arm another squeeze. “I think you have some hard decisions to make. Just remember—you do get to make those decisions. Make them yours and nobody else’s.”

I considered that for a moment. How glorious it sounded to be able to make my own decisions about my life. I’d tried it before, though. I’d had a life I’d created on my own, once. But she was right about my fears. “What difference does it make if my life just gets ripped out from under me again?”

“Oh, Kales,” Addie said with a sigh. “I’ll do my damnedest to make sure nothing like what you’ve been through happens again, but I can’t guarantee anything. All I can say is that you can’t let that fear hold you back, or you’ll never be able to move forward. Take the power you do have and use it.”

Tilting my head, I studied her, letting her meaning sink in. “When did you get so wise?”

She smiled. “My destiny is to be a wise old witch, so I may as well start working on it now.”

“Good thing you have a lot of years before you get to the old requirement, so you can practice the wise part,” I teased.

“Aw, come on. I thought I did good for my first time.”

I laughed. “If imparting your wisdom means leaving your subject more confused than ever, you’ll make a fine wise old witch, Bratty Addie.”

She considered this for a moment and nodded. “I’ll take that. So, you don’t know what you’re going to do?”

I stood and grabbed my nearly untouched cup of coffee. “I’m going to think. That’s what I’m going to do. Because you’re right. It’s time for me to woman up and be the boss of my own life.”