Shortly after my eighteenth birthday, I moved to Sheridan. East insisted on going wherever I was going. I didn’t fight him on this, mostly because I knew I’d be all alone in the world if it wasn’t for him.

Instead, I chose a D1 college where I knew he’d ride a full scholarship and enjoy his time.

The fights at the Sheridan Plaza were the start of my parents’ financial recovery, but they weren’t enough. My dream was to make it up to them the best I could. And that meant rebuilding their house from scratch and getting Dad’s business back on its feet.

But in my quest to find an answer to all of their trouble, I forgot to ask myself where the hell I fit into this equation.

Forgot how to breathe without hurting.

Forgot that there was more to life than earning money and surviving.

Forgot that when you played with fire, eventually, you get burned.

West

In the end, it all boiled down to this: I couldn’t have Kade Appleton and his scouts know that Grace was my girlfriend. He had eyes everywhere, and confirming she and I were together was going to put her in the line of fire.

I couldn’t do that.

So I did what I had to.

Dumped my ugly past at her feet.

Aubrey didn’t die in a car accident.

She died because of me.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think about Aub the first night I laid eyes on Grace Shaw. That it wasn’t why I took the job at the food truck. Sure, the extra money was helpful, but mainly, I wanted to see what Aub would be like had she survived the fire. What kind of person she’d grow up to be.

I realized how majorly fucked up that was to look at this chick and see my sister. But that was the thing—I didn’t see Aubrey in Grace. Not at all.

Grace was Grace. A madly unique person. Sweet-mannered and kind and funny, but also sarcastic and feisty and intelligent. She was gorgeous—scratch that, fucking breathtaking, apart from those scars that didn’t even matter to me—and the more I spent time with her, the more it was impossible to think of her as a replacement to the sister I loved so desperately.

Texas thought I pitied her. That she was a pet project. And I’d confirmed her darkest suspicions to make sure Kade Appleton and his rats think the same thing.

But I never pitied her. Not even for one second.

If anything, I envied her strength. I couldn’t have dealt with half the shit she’s been through and still survive.

Hell, I still couldn’t talk to my own parents without breaking into goddamn hives.

Now, the guilt of what I did to her at the cafeteria ate at me alive like the fire that consumed Aubrey.

“You’re such an idiot.” East shook his head. He was cruising around town, clutching the steering wheel like he was ready to yank and throw it out the window. We’d been doing that for an hour now. I sat next to him in his Toyota Camry, wallowing in the sheer volume of my stupidity.

“School’s full of rats. Couldn’t chance Appleton finding out about Grace and getting to her.” I fixed my gaze on the view outside the window, reminding myself to fucking breathe.

“Appleton doesn’t want to hurt your girlfriend, you moron. He wants to hurt you.”

“He’s hurt women before.”

“That was his own girlfriend,” East argued.

“Exactly what makes you think Grace, who is a stranger, is safe when his own goddamn baby momma isn’t? Not to mention, one of his errand boys has warned me that he knows where Grace lives.”

I referred to the incident at the intersection, where the guy on the Harley commented on Tex.

“Then why did you say yes to the fight?” East growled.

“That was before I hooked up with Grace.”

“Why didn’t you cancel?”

“He wouldn’t fucking let me!” I boomed. “Were you not there when I gave you the rundown five thousand times?”

“Why didn’t you tell her the truth?” Easton kept pushing, and that was when I officially lost it.

“Because she had enough on her fucking plate and didn’t need my shit on top of it!”

My roar shook the entire car, reverberating between us. I didn’t even tell him the whole truth. The truth I was able to admit only to myself. That I knew Grace would have broken up with me, and that she had the right to know. The right to get rid of my ass before things got ten times more complicated. It wasn’t a noble thing to do, to lie to the person you love, but I’d long realized that love made you do twisted things.

Easton got back to being annoyingly quiet, and I drew a breath, gluing my gaze back to the monotonous view of yellow ranch-styled houses, the water tower, and cactuses.

Maybe if things had been different with Aubrey, I wouldn’t be so paranoid about the people I loved. But Aubrey had died, and keeping Grace safe was my top priority, even if it gutted me inside out.

Even leaving here wouldn’t have changed that. If anything, I’d be leaving her unprotected, in the same zip code with that asshole, Kade Appleton.

I’d already come to terms with the dreadful fact that I loved her.

It was the kind of love that made me roll my eyes to oblivion when I saw it in movies and TV. The intensity of it scared the shit out of me, because I never thought I could be this way with someone who wasn’t blood-related to me.

I couldn’t stop thinking about her.

Wanting to touch her.

Wondering what she was thinking, where she was, what she was doing.

It was different from the fairy tales, because I knew that I could go on without Grace Shaw. It wouldn’t kill me. Not physically, anyway. I’d just go back to being the same miserable jackass I was prior to falling in love with her.

But I wouldn’t be alive. Not really. I would be wasting oxygen, space, and resources, going back to not-so-secretly wishing I’d die.

The realization dawned on me like a cold shower.

I didn’t want to die when I was with Grace.

I wanted to live. To laugh. To love.

To date her and nibble on her neck and listen to her talking about plays and nineties movies and defending fanny packs vehemently.

I’d been relishing life—actively enjoying it, even—for months, and I didn’t even realize it.

I didn’t want to die anymore.

Somewhere along the road, the idea of veering my bike off the road when I picked up speed stopped appealing to me. I no longer imagined what it would feel like to hurl myself off a cliff. I stopped walking into the ring wanting the asshole in front of me to throw a punch that would send me into cardiac arrest.