I almost groaned. “Yeah. I guessed as much.”

“But I won’t tell him.” She smiled sweetly, looping her arm through mine. “It’s our little secret, babe.”

I crashed at Danielle and Nate’s place that night. She drove me back to pick up my car in the morning, bemoaning that she had to go into the office with a hangover.

She brought up again that she wouldn’t tell anyone about seeing me and Manson in the trees. But instead of being reassured, I felt more like she was holding it over my head.

“I’ll see you at the race next Friday!” she said, waving to me out her window as she drove away.

I was trying to avoid drama, not launch myself straight into the middle of it. Lucas and Alex’s grudge race was bound to go badly, regardless of who won. But I couldn’t deny how curious I was.

Every time I looked down at my hand and saw the scabbed heart cut into my finger, a strange feeling of guilt and anger flooded me. Would it scar? Was that moment in the trees going to be a part of me forever, another tie to bind me to the men I wasn’t supposed to want?

Another mark of my own indecision?

On Thursday, Danielle called to ask if I wanted to get dinner together before the race, insisting it wasn’t an event to miss.

“Alex is going to win, easy,” she said. “And you know he’d love for you to be there.”

I didn’t like the sly tone in her words. I’d told her I wasn’t interested in Alex, but she seemed dead set on pushing for it anyway. First my mom, and now Danielle too? Why the hell couldn’t people keep their noses out of my dating life?

“You, me, and Candace can sit back, relax, and get tipsy while the guys have their dick measuring contest,” she said. I couldn’t really think of a good reason to say no to a night out getting tipsy, so I agreed I would be there.

Candace was another friend from high school I hadn’t seen in a while. She was a little airheaded, but she loved to have a good time.

That was what I needed, a fun night out proving to myself that I could be around Manson and his friends without turning into a flustered fool.

Friday night, I met up with Danielle and Candace for dinner before we headed toward Ellis Road. It ran along the very edge of a town, a long straight road entirely devoid of streetlights with open farmland on either side. Everyone was meeting at the bridge, and there were about a dozen people already there as I pulled up behind Danielle and parked in the dirt.

The trickle of the creek and chirp of crickets filled the air as we walked together to where Alex, Nate, and Matthew were waiting beside the Hellcat.