Cover

Prologue

Colt

Seven Years Ago

May was supposed to be in the barn, where her quinceañera was still in full swing. The drinking and dancing were turned up to a hundred-and-ten, but the birthday girl was nowhere to be found.

I was unfortunately too self-absorbed to notice. I was busy being a dramatic fifteen-year-old guy and moping because May hadn’t chosen me to be a chambelan in her court of honour. She’d chosen Dylan Wright as one of them, though. I guess it made sense. Dylan was starting quarterback on the football team and worshipped the ground May walked on. Great guy.

To be fair, even if she had chosen me, I was self-aware enough to know I wasn’t the party-planning type. But I’d have got my shit together for May Velasco.

At the end of the day, I didn’t care if Dylan was a better waltzer than me. It was the sentiment that mattered. Dylan Wright 1. CJ Bradley 0.

I had just left the barn and hit the dirt path, kicking rocks with my dress shoes, all angsty teenage main character. I’d headed out of the party through the back of the ranch after Ma and Pop announced they’d bring the car around because my kid sister, Savannah, was getting cranky. I was alone in the field.

Or at least I thought so, until I realized that May was out there, too.

I guess she hadn’t let anyone know, just dipped out on a whim from her own party. She had escaped to the lacrosse field her dad made her a couple years back in the fields behind the Velasco family ranch, lines spray-painted in the trimmed grass, goals on either end. She still wore her surprise dance outfit, a tight white blouse with frilly straps and bootcut jeans, paired with her shiny gold county barrel-race champion belt-buckle. She hadn’t bothered to change out of her boots, brown ones with butterflies across the front. Her black hair was perched precariously on her head in a very curly half-up, her crown and makeup and fake eyelashes still in place. The lacrosse stick in her hands, completely ignoring the long bedazzled acrylic nails she must have had done not too long ago, May swung. The ball went flying from the head of her crosse with a swoosh, and then the satisfying whack when it hit the back of the net. She turned to me slowly, cognac-coloured eyes probing, crossing her arms as if to say, ‘Well?’

‘Wanna join?’ she asked.

‘Sure.’