But I wasn’t sure if there was a place for me at parties like that anymore. If I had to go there and lie to make people accept me, why bother?

I passed my sister on the stairs as I was coming down, and she said, “Hey, your boyfriend is outside. Or…” She wrinkled her nose. “One of them is.”

Manson had texted me he’d be arriving soon, but I remained frozen on the stairs, staring at Steph. “Why do you think he’s my boyfriend?”

She cocked her hip and made a face — God, I could swear I used to do the exact same move. It was so weird to see your own sibling turn into a miniature version of yourself. “Um, let’s see…you’re always coming home with hickeys, so obviously you’re seeing someone. Also, Mary Volkov told me you’re dating her brother, so…” She shrugged. “I don’t know why Mom ever fell for your whole They’re just my mechanics! story. You’re losing your touch, sis. You have to be sneakier.”

She walked away, flipping her long blonde hair over her shoulder. I’m sure she knew all about being sneaky; I’d done everything in secret when I was a teenager. At the time, it had felt fun, risky, like stealing freedom I wasn’t supposed to have.

But having to sneak around as a twenty-two-year-old woman was tiring.

I met Manson at the curb, sliding into the front seat of his Mustang and giving him a kiss on the cheek. It felt natural to do; I hadn’t even thought about it. But he still looked at me in surprise as he put the car into gear.

“What’s that look for?” I said, taking my mirror out of my bag and preening more in an attempt to hide the blush that tinted my cheeks.

“You’re in a good mood today,” he said, chuckling as we pulled out of my neighborhood.

“You should see me after I have my caffeine,” I said, turning up his music. “I’ll really be in a great mood then.”

I recognized the song as one he’d played the night we went to the lookout, and I found myself humming along as we drove. He parked outside the coffee shop instead of going through the drive-through, explaining, “The engine is too loud and they can never hear me order over the speaker.”

We ordered and took our coffees to go; a white mocha latte for me, a regular mocha latte for him, and six shots of espresso over ice.

“For Lucas,” he explained. “Black as his heart is.”

He took the long way home, driving us through the back roads that wound past farms and fields. He avoided the dirt roads, however, unlike Vincent. But I couldn’t imagine the Mustang would do very well bumping along the rutted dirt.