Victoria didn’t sit back down. Instead, she braced her hands against the frame on either side of the cart, her arms and legs forming an X that I could only partially see when I glanced back at her in the dark. She angled her face skyward, her long hair waving behind her, lost to shadow, as I gave the golf cart a little more gas.

“Let the games,” Victoria murmured, “begin.”

CHAPTER 21

It became clear pretty quickly that the primary game in question was chase. The woods were vast, uneven, and littered with rocks, trees, and the kind of dense underbrush that a golf cart could only plow through going full speed—and only because these particular golf carts had a lot more horsepower than the kind you’d find on a golf course.

“Truth or dare?” Victoria yelled in my ear as we hit a bump that sent us airborne—and swerving to miss a tree. Behind us, I could hear another cart full of girls shrieking—and closing in.

“Really?” I shouted back, easing off the gas just enough to hang a turn. “You want to play Truth or Dare now?”

Our headlights illuminated the woods for just three or four feet in front of us. I aimed for what I hoped was a bit of a clearing and gave the cart enough gas to tear through the brush.

Victoria may have tightened her hold on the cart, but she didn’t show any signs that her heart rate had ticked up even a beat. “My mother is thirty-five years younger than my father. I’m the family scandal and the much-beloved baby. It’s called multitasking. Truth or dare, Taft?”

“Truth!” Lily yelled as we picked up speed. The shrieking behind us got louder and our pursuers closed in. “She’ll take truth.”

“Excellent choice,” Victoria commented. I hauled it ninety degrees to the left, hit a clear patch, and managed to circle back behind the other cart, flying past them before they’d registered what was happening.

Victoria chose that moment to let loose her question. “Why did you ask me about Ana?”

“Who’s Ana?” Lily said beside me.

This time, I took a major bump on purpose. Golf carts didn’t come with seat belts, so we all bounced upward, fast enough and far enough to nearly hit our heads on the cart’s roof.

Unfortunately, once we’d righted ourselves, it became clear to me that neither Victoria nor Lily was letting go of the question.

“Ana,” Victoria told Lily, “is my niece—and a friend of Sawyer’s mother, and yes, my father really is that old.”

Though we’d left our closest pursuers in the dust, I could hear at least two more carts nearby. I steered us away from the noise.

“Your turn,” Victoria told me. “Truth. You don’t have secrets from your cousin, do you?”