Page 20 of Second First Kiss

Harris slung his arms around Lucas and, yanking him over at the waist, gave him a noogie. “I’m counting down the days until you realize you’re being an ass and that your place is here. With your family.”

“Right.” Lucas shoved Harris, then picked up an eggshell and tossed it in the wind. “And miss all of this? What am I thinking?”

“You’re not,” Jax said. “Just like Nolan wasn’t thinking at that trailhead.”

After the other night, Nolan felt like an asshole. There were a dozen different ways to have handled the situation, but given the extraneous situation of the gun, there was only one right way. Then why did he feel as if he’d made a wrong step?

Because you made her already difficult world that much more difficult. He’d been just another in a long line of people who were only looking out for their own ass.

“Things are different now,” Nolan insisted, feeling guilty as hell.

“A lot has changed, I just don’t think you understand what has,” Brynn said cryptically.

7

Kat had lived five lifetimes between Ms. Woods’s drop-in yesterday and now. She was three hours into her second job and hadn’t eaten since lunch. Not even caffeine could help her at this point.

Which was why she’d tied on her ballbuster cloak tighter than normal—something she did whenever she felt vulnerable. And, damn, she felt raw. Knowing she was failing as a parent was bad enough, but to see the look of premeditated disappointment on Ms. Woods’s face had been like a kick to the baby maker.

It was as if the woman had expected nothing less than a situation exactly like that. Like Kat had handed the woman all the proof she needed to write her off as an irresponsible guardian.

At this point, Kat wouldn’t be surprised if news of Tessa’s late-night shenanigans had burned through town like wildfire. When Nolan brought Tessa to the station, he effectively announced to the entire town of Sierra Vista her greatest insecurity, that Kat was failing at life.

Spectacularly.

God, something had to give or she was going to go down harder than the time she’d been caught using a backdoor hack into the SAT test’s servers, which belong to the College Board, a nonprofit organization. It had been a dare, which she’d accepted, then stole the answers to the test and sold them to half the junior class. She looked at it as a way to expose how wealthier students, who have more access to test-prep tools and tutors, historically benefit from the financial divide. The school board hadn’t viewed it the same.

Not only did it cause a scandal between the SAT board and Sierra Vista High, but the parents of the kids who had cheated, the golden kids who could do no wrong, banded together and put all the blame on Kat, and wouldn’t stop until she was punished.

The other students were issued a warning and allowed to retake the test the following month. Kat was banned from entering the statewide robotics tournament, which had a five-thousand-dollar scholarship—a scholarship she desperately needed. She was suspended for two weeks and given three-hundred hours of community service—and she hadn’t even cheated. Hadn’t needed to.

College was her chance to start fresh without the baggage of being a Rhodes and she wanted to get in on her own merit. But since she didn’t have proof she hadn’t cheated, her score was also zeroed out. If it hadn’t been for her grandfather, those parents would have pushed until Kat wasn’t able to take the test at all.

Kat still remembered the day she and her grandfather sat in that big room at city hall, just the two of them against the town. She was only sixteen, staring down an angry PTA board, who called her the worst names known to man, placing all the blame on her, and going as far as to reach out to her top college picks to notify them of Kat’s wrongdoings.

Kat’s stunt cost her four of her five top picks and a chance at valedictorian. It also cost her a broken heart. Because her partner in crime, a close friend and the inventor of the plan, had feigned innocence, leaving all the blame on Kat. The friend’s parents lawyered up, claimed that she had no previous knowledge of the hack, and was another victim of Kat’s SAT scam just like the others.

The IP address used was Kat’s, so she took the fall. It was her word against a rich girl. Guess who they believed? Which was how Kat ended up in junior college taking classes part time while working full time to help with bills, and her sister and dad.

It took her an additional five years to earn a two-year associate degree and clean up her past before MIT finally accepted her. But when it came to rebuilding her trust in humanity, that ship had sailed long ago. Which was why Kat constructed walls thicker than a bank vault door to keep out the people who would take advantage of her. After her ex, she added an encrypted password to protect her heart.

So far it was working, but man, was it lonely. She didn’t miss Ryan, but she missed the companionship—having someone to lean on. Being so far from home in Boston, Kat didn’t have anyone to rely on, so when Ryan came along she thought she’d found her rock, someone she could give her heart and trust to, someone who would treasure them and treat them with care. Man, was she wrong.

So she’d recommitted to going it on her own, and just accepted the side effect of being alone even in a crowd of people.

Take tonight, for instance. It was Body Shot Saturday at Bigfoot’s, where the body in question was a ten-foot wood carving of Bigfoot himself, with a shot glass–sized hole in his bellybutton. Combine that with two-dollar tequila shots, and it brought in double the customers, double the crazies, and double the tips.

That’s why there was a queue to get in the joint, cash lining the bar, and at least six bachelorette parties present. And somehow Kat felt all alone. She’d battled imposter syndrome since she was little. There were bits of her that she kept hidden from even her best friends. Insecurities and vulnerabilities that made it impossible for her to trust other people to do the right thing.

Well, she’d trusted one person with everything. But Zoe was gone. She’d passed away last year from breast cancer. But until her dying day she’d been more of a sister to Kat than a friend. They shared everything: secrets, hopes, dreams, and fears. There wasn’t anything she kept from Zoe and wow, what a void was left behind in her absence. While Kat had two besties, no one would ever come close to Zoe.

With a heavy sigh, Kat made her way down the bar, from one end to the other, collecting the bills and dirty glasses, and refilling mugs like it was an Olympic sport. Even on her off days she could fake being on.

She could fake a lot of things. It was just a matter of if she could fake it when it came to the important stuff—like her sister.

Kat looked at the empty barstool next to her friend Gemma and rolled her eyes. “Milly’s still not back?”

“Should we send out a search party?” Gemma asked.

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