How long has she already been gone?
I check my watch. 8:23 p.m.
Last sound: 6:47 p.m.
96 minutes ago.
She could be anywhere by now.
FIFTEEN
HARPER
The mansion risesup in front of me like it was built to make poor people feel small—four stories of blinding white stone, thick marble columns, and so much warm, bright light beaming from the windows it’s practically a lighthouse. Even the bushes look expensive—perfectly squared-off hedges lining the circular driveway that have their own, individual lights.
I tilt my head back to see the roof and regret it immediately. The whiskey I pre-gamed with sloshes in my stomach.
Three hours ago, I was suffocating in that house. In my room. In my own skin. Unable to breathe past the weight of Caleb being fifteen feet away in the next room, the ghost of his hands on my body from days ago. And the sick twist in my gut every time I caught myselfwantinghim to touch me like that again.
I want strings attached with you, Harper.
So I did what I do best.
I ran.
Borrowed Silas’s spare truck keys—borrowed, not stole, there’s a difference—and drove until the pressure in my chest eased enough to let oxygen back in. Until I could think about something other than the way Caleb’s voice cracks when he says my name, or how his control was so close to fracturing when he touched me, or the terrifying realization that I might actuallycarewhat happens to him.
Fuck that noise.
I’m eighteen in two days. Just two days until Z and I execute our brilliant plan to escape his psycho stepdad and my… whatever the Grahams are to me.Family?The word tastes wrong in my mouth—too sweet and sticky, like artificial cherry flavoring. I fucking hate cherry flavoring.
So tonight’s my last hurrah. One final night of being exactly who I’ve always been—Harper Tucker, the girl who makes bad decisions and doesn’t apologize for them—before I chain myself to a fake marriage and a future that feels like a trap, even if it’s the only way out.
McKenzie’s party was supposed to be exclusive, invitation-only, but high school secrets leak faster than cheap eyeliner. I saw the crude hand-drawn map taped inside the handicapped stall in the east wing bathroom—the stall everyone uses when they need to skip class or cry or both. I snapped a pic before it got ripped down.
Of course, I didn’t plan on actually going.
But here I am, because the alternative was staying inthat house one more second, feeling like a feral cat trapped just a door away from the stepbrother I have no business having feelings for.
Stepbrother.Jesus Christ. The word should be a bucket of ice water. Should kill whatever this thing is.
Instead, it just makes it more fucked up. More wrong. More something I need to drown in beer and bottom-shelf whiskey until it stops mattering.
The bass from inside the mansion isn’t just music—it’s a heartbeat, thumping through the pavement and up my boots. I take another pull from the flask in my jacket. Dad’s Jack Daniel’s. The good stuff. “Liquid courage,” Mom called it—though in her mouth it always meant “liquid excuse.”
For me, it’s liquidfuck this.
Forget the way Caleb looks at me in the mornings across the breakfast table. Forget how Helen smiled so huge at me last weekend when I cleared my plate and put it in the dishwasher without being asked. Forget that damn cat and how, when Silas called me “kiddo” the other day, like it was the most natural thing in the world, something in my chest cracked open just a little.
I push through the front door of McKenzie’s mansion before I can chicken out.
The noise hits first—a wall of sound so thick it’s physical, hammering into my ribcage and rattling my teeth. Then the lights: laser beams slicing through fake fog, strobing everything in neon pink and electric blue. Bodies everywhere, pressed together, perfume and cologne as thick as the chemical haze.
A red Solo cup appears in my hand. Some guy,already several drinks past coherent, grins at me with unfocused eyes. I take a sip, bracing for watery beer, and nearly choke.
Jack and Coke.RealCoke. Smooth whiskey that actually tastes right.
These kids don’t fuck around.