Mia glanced back toward the bonfire. Cash’s gaze was still fixed on the scene across from him, the intertwined pair.

Lacey waited for Mia’s attention to shift back and then raised one perfectly plucked brow, the corner of her lip lifting in nothing resembling amusement. “You’ll see.”

“We didn’t . . . We didn’t ever talk,” Mia stuttered, gasping out of the memory. “You and I. We never talked.”

“Is that how it went?” Lacey asked.

Mia never climbed up to the lighthouse’s lookout tower by herself. But tonight she went up the stairs, holding tight to the bottle of Eagle Rare she’d nabbed from the bar when Max wasn’t looking. She’d leave him a twenty in the register later, but she’d needed the numbness it had offered, and Mama had run out of her supply.

Mia went out onto the metal grating that circled the tower, her legs slipping through the bars, her butt at the very edge. When she looked out, there seemed to be nothing beneath her, nothing in front of her. Just water and emptiness.

“You gonna share?” Lacey asked from the doorway. She must have seen Mia, must have followed her. If it had been someone else, Mia would have been annoyed. But Lacey didn’t know her, didn’t give a shit about her. Right now, it was what Mia needed. Someone who didn’t give a shit.

She took a too-big swig, then held out the bottle.

Time passed until it became meaningless. Only after what had to be hours did Lacey ask what happened.

“Didn’t get the scholarship.” Mia shrugged, as if it didn’t mean anything. As if her world hadn’t shattered. “Means I’ll be stuck here after school. Forever.”

“You fucked it up?” Lacey asked, in that blunt way of hers that was just on the wrong side of painful.

“Yup.”

“We can be fuckups together.”

Then there was that picture of Lacey and Mia in Cash’s attic, at the festival, a mini tableau of jealousy and anger playing out behind them.

“Here, smile big and pretty,” Lacey said, smooshing her cheek to Mia’s, holding the camera at arm’s length, tilted just enough that she was probably capturing Cash talking to Monroe, too. Probably capturing the scene from which Mia had just ripped her attention.

Mia plastered on something that must’ve looked like a grimace, the flash blinding when they had adjusted to the dark. Lacey’s fingers dug into the flesh of Mia’s upper arm, painful and bruising, and Mia pulled away.

But Lacey didn’t let her get far, her eyes locked on Mia’s face, unwavering in their intensity.

She leaned in, quick, a snake striking, and pressed her gloss-sticky lips to the hollow of Mia’s cheek, the smack of it loud and exaggerated.