in.”

We’re ten minutes onto 95 before either of us says anything, and when he does his voice is quiet, the ocean at low tide. “Nobody threw you a baby shower?” he asks.

“No.” I shake my head. “But that was a stupid thing to say. A stupid example. It just popped into my head.”

“It’s not stupid. It blows.”

“Yeah, well. I am very, very disappointing to my family.” I concentrate on the road and try to sound collected, matter-of-fact, resigned. I’m humiliated to have lost it the way I did; I don’t act that way, not ever. I feel like I need to button up as quickly as I can. “And to yours, actually.”

He shakes his head. He looks disgusted. “I don’t know why I’m shocked. Of course they pulled all that Catholic bullshit with you. Madonnas and whores and whatever the hell else they can think of to make you feel two inches tall. They’re hypocrites, all of them.”

“No, they’re not.”

“Can you please get mad?”

“Obviously I’m mad, Sawyer!”

“I know.” Sawyer shakes his head, scrubs at his hair with restless hands. “I’m sorry. It’s just—the more I think about it, the more pissed off I get.”

“That’s why I don’t think about it.”

“You’re full of crap.”

I shrug. “Only a little.”

“Why did you put up with it?”

“Well, we can’t all run away,” I say, then realize that there’s a fine line between flip and bitchy, and I probably just crossed it. “Sorry,” I tell him, sighing. Sometimes it feels like my entire relationship with Sawyer has been one long apology. “I didn’t mean that how it sounded.”

“Sure you did,” he says affably.

“Yeah, I kind of did.” I’m wrung out like a washcloth. I almost laugh. “Anyway, I had nowhere to go.”

“I wish you’d told me. When I first got here, I mean. I wish you’d said.”

I glance over my shoulder and change lanes. “That’s your family, Sawyer.”

“Yeah, well.” He reaches behind him to retrieve Hannah’s cloth bunny, which she’s dropped on the floor. Hannah grins. “You’re my family, too.”

We drive for over an hour, not really talking. Sawyer hums under his breath. It feels weirdly peaceful to be in the car with him, steadying, like he and Hannah and I are in our own little climate-controlled bubble, totally unbothered by the world rolling by outside. I know eventually we’ll have to go back and face the music—I know that it can’t possibly last—but Hannah’s asleep, and Sawyer’s breathing beside me, and for a while it’s nice to pretend.

I’m pulling back into the driveway when Cade’s wife, Stefanie, comes running out onto the front walk, her plump face worried and drawn. I blink in surprise: Stefanie wasn’t at dinner. A second after that I’m hit with a cold blast of fear. I get the door open as quick as I can, my thoughts tumbling over each other and the memory of my phone ringing the night Allie died right at the center, like the eye of a devastating storm.

“What happened?” I demand loud enough to wake the baby, fumbling to unbuckle my seat belt and climb out. “Stef.”

Stefanie holds her hands up, shakes her frizzy blond head. “Reena,” she says, before I can even get out of the car. “It’s your dad.”

36

Before

Ms. Bowen wasn’t thrilled with me for skipping our meeting. “That was really unlike you, Reena,” she chided, a way colder tone than she’d ever used with me before. She was wearing her glasses today, a smart- looking tortoiseshell pair. “Not to mention disrespectful to me.”

“I know.” I felt myself wilt a bit under her gaze. “I’m sorry.” On top of that, my AP Lit teacher was a hard- ass, and when I couldn’t produce a doctor’s note he docked me two full letter grades on the Tolstoy quiz.

I stared at the bright red C at the top of my make-up quiz, feeling sick. This definitely wouldn’t happen again, I promised myself, trying to avoid a full-on freak-out in the middle of the hallway. I couldn’t keep letting Sawyer distract me from what I was actually supposed to be doing if I was serious about graduating early.

My resolve didn’t last long, though: A week or so later and I was a third of the way through a busy-ish dinner service at the restaurant, heading back to the kitchen for another basket of bread for the carb-happy tourists at a two-top in the back, when Sawyer yanked me by the wrist into the office.

“Wha—” I started, eyes going wide, but he was busy shoving the door shut behind us and then pressing me up against it, a kiss like a leash of deer rushing fleetly through my chest. He tasted like chewing gum, and under that like beer. “So how’s your night going, honey?” I murmured against the sharp, sleek line of his jaw.

Sawyer grinned once, hard and bright, two warm hands against the base of my ribs where my button-down had come untucked (or, more accurately, where he’d untucked it). “My night’s great,” he said, and kissed me again.

I closed my eyes and sank into it a little, my fists opening and closing against the starchy fabric of his work shirt. Sawyer was a good kisser. He had one hand behind my neck now, fingertips in my hair and tugging my head back just the slightest bit so he could get to the pale, sensitive skin underneath my collar; he was working one knee ever so slowly between mine when the door to the office opened hard behind me.

I stumbled forward into Sawyer, then turned around. There was my father, eyes dark and angry, jaw clenched hard. For a second, all he did was stare.

“Um,” I said, hand flying to my mouth before I could quell the impulse, wiping with the back of my hand. Behind me, Sawyer cleared his throat. “We were just—”

“Don’t.” Two bright pops of color stood out against the skin on either side of his face. He opened his mouth and then shut it again, like it was taking every ounce of human restraint not to let both of us have it at the top of his lungs in front of the Holy Father and the seventy-five guests in the dining room. “Get back on the bar before I fire you,” he managed finally, looking at Sawyer. “Now.”

Sawyer nodded obediently, smoothed down the front of his shirt, and stepped around me toward the door. I moved to follow, my face even redder than my father’s, but he got a hand around my elbow, tight enough to hurt. “You,” he said quietly. “You stay.”

“Leo—” Sawyer started.

“Sawyer, I swear to God that if you don’t get out of my sight in another second, you’re going to see a side of me you’ve never seen before, and I promise you you’re not going to like it.”

Sawyer went.

My father shut the door hard behind him and turned to deal with me. “Are you kidding me?” he demanded. He only held my gaze for a fraction of a second, like it was hard for him to maintain the eye contact. He went to the desk and dug a bottle of aspirin out of the top drawer, swallowed two without the benefit of water. “I mean it. I honestly don’t know how to handle you lately. I really don’t.”

“Daddy,” I said, trying to keep calm, the way I’d been taught to deal with an irate customer. “We were only just—”

“You were only just what, Serena?” he retorted, literally throwing up his hands. The phone rang on the desk, a noisy jangle, but he acted like he didn’t even hear. His eyes darted to my untucked shirt. “Fooling around in my office and who knows what else? I’m not going to stand for it. I’m not.”

I fiddled a bit with the computer wires hanging off the edge of the desk. To be fair, the office was a colossally bone-headed location for us to have chosen—it was hard for me to keep a sweaty grip on logic where Sawyer was concerned. “I’m sorry,” I said, as sincerely as I could manage. I wanted so badly to calm him down.

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