Page 2 of Summer's Edge

Now I might have to eat every promise I ever made.

Because she’s made me want to live again.

Something I never thought would ever happen.

ONE

Summer

Piña coladas on the beach and one last weekend of partying with my friends before I have to return home to get locked up in my golden cage again. One last weekend of freedom before every halfway decent guy averts his eyes each time I pass, and I have the same five conversations with everyone over and over again. Or maybe it’s more like one conversation because lately all our conversations end up on the same topic: War. Death. Of everyone we love.

Even after Hunter and Trixie’s wedding, the one no one thought would ever happen, that’s all we ended up talking about.

I love my family, I do. But freedom is better. I thought I would finally have that when I got my first real job in LA. Junior makeup artist for one of the year’s top blockbusters and the single best experience of my life.

I got the gig off a makeup video I posted that went viral, but even before that I’d been applying for years to every such job I could find. It took me months to persuade my parents and everyone else to let me do it.

My dad’s not big on letting things go. Especially his daughters. And now that Devil’s Nightmare MC has gotten wrapped up in an all-out war with too many other MCs to count—as my mom tells it—I doubt I’ll ever see the outside world again.

The bodyguards he had trailing me on set weren’t even trying to blend in, which drove everyone crazy, especially me.

Biker Club Princesswas thrown around a lot. Mostly behind my back. Until I owned it. Now it’s an inside joke with my friends—the people I spent almost every waking hour with for the last three months of filming.

You tell your own story. You don’t let anyone else tell it.Just one of the many things my dad taught me over the years.

I just wish more of it was actually applicable to the real world and not only to the biker world he’s so dead set on sheltering me from.

I didn’t think this getaway to Tijuana would be sanctioned, so I didn’t tell anyone I was going. I successfully ditched the bodyguards by dressing up as Princess Staeia, the lead character in the movie. I walked right past them in a sparkling green, skintight evening dress made of latex. The dress they noticed. The lioness mask covering my face they did not.

My plan exactly. I’m not a Biker Club Princess for nothing. And one thing I know is that all bikers will sooner notice a hot body than a pretty face. And my dad’s MC brothers, well, they’ve spent so much timenotlooking at my body that I could walk past them with just my head covered and they’d wouldn’t recognize me.

None of them followed me as I slid into the back of my friend Marcia’s convertible, and we sped off the studio lot and down the highway to Mexico.

We were already sipping the first round of Piña Coladas before they noticed I was gone. That’s when my dad’s angry texts started coming.

Stuff like,

This is no time to act stupid, Summer.

And,Where are you? I’m coming to get you.

And,At least fucking answer me so I know you’re alright.

I did, but only to keep him from going insane. And I did add that I’m twenty-five years old and would like some damn freedom.

Then I turned off my phone.

“They already missing you, biker princess?” Luis asks, his thick French accent somewhat softened by the amount of booze he’s already consumed.

He’d started drinking in the car and the hot sun beating down on us on this beach isn’t doing him any favors.

“Let them miss me,” I say as I toss the phone into my bag.

“That’s my girl,” he says and toasts me with his half empty bottle of rum.

I smile, clink my glass against it and say nothing.

I could tell him I’ll never be his girl like I’ve been forced to do since we met a month ago. He’s been trailing me like a lovesick puppy ever since then, but nothing’s ever gonna happen between us. He’s a nice guy, but definitely friend-zone material. And if I’m gonna be with anyone while we’re here, it’ll be with one of the buff waiters wearing only tan-colored shorts, which are not loose at all.

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