It had been May and far too cold for bathing suits, but Monroe and Lacey Bell had been wearing bikinis anyway. Mia remembered snickering at the amount of exposed pale white flesh that had been on display.

The boys hadn’t laughed.

Mia had been of the age where she should’ve resented Monroe—for her curves, or her dark lashes, or the way she drew both Asher’s and Cash’s eyes when she tugged the bottom edges of her suit from where they’d slipped up her cheeks.

But Monroe had waved at the length of her own body, then tilted toward the water’s whitecaps. Not quite Florida, I guess. There was something so adult about the way she said it, careless confidence tempered by self-deprecation, and Mia had been immediately won over.

Asher had handed over the bottle of Jack. This will warm you up.

They’d stayed the rest of the day, swigging the amber liquid and playing truth or dare until finally they were drunk enough to get Monroe to kiss Asher. When their lips had met, Mia had watched closely, the light from the bonfire turning their faces golden.

She’d always wondered if there was anything more than friendship between her and Asher. Despite the fact that she’d had Cash, there was a question, always just sitting in the back of her mind, not really begging for attention but not fading away, either.

Something odd had curled in her belly when she’d watched the two of them, but it wasn’t rancid like jealousy, wasn’t sharp like anger. It was just . . . there.

Cash’s fingers had slipped up underneath the back of her hoodie, stroking her spine lightly, sending shivers out along her skin like slowly shattering glass.

When she’d managed to tear her gaze from the fumbling couple and the way Asher’s hand had ridden high along Monroe’s sweatpants-clad thigh, Mia had found Lacey watching her instead of her sister. The girl had smiled and shrugged, then stood up and made her way toward the water, an acknowledgment that she was out of place.

Cash’s mouth had been against Mia’s a breath later, his hand curling around her hip, drawing her closer. And she’d given in to the pull.

“I was so blind that whole summer,” Mia said now, breaking the quiet that had fallen. Mama stood next to her, both of them staring out at what should have been a picturesque landscape. Mia found it achingly lonely instead. A forgotten swing set, a hushed forest, snow that was suffocating instead of pretty.

Her stomach churned, growling at the emptiness it found there. She sighed, laying her temple against Mama’s shoulder, the night making them both softer, blurring their battle lines.