To calm her nerves, Emma took a long sip of spiked tomato juice and summoned her inner Sutton, a girl she’d learned was snarky and sassy and didn’t take shit from anyone. “Aww. Did you miss me? Or were you nervous that someone dragged me away and left me for dead in the desert?” She glanced at the three faces staring back at her, trying to detect anything that looked like an admission of guilt. Madeline picked at her chipped peach nail polish. Charlotte coolly sipped her Bloody Mary. Laurel gazed out at the golf course as if she’d just spotted someone she recognized.

Then Sutton’s iPhone chimed. Emma pulled it out of her bag and checked the screen. She had a text from Ethan. HOW ARE YOU AFTER LAST NIGHT? LET ME KNOW IF YOU NEED ANYTHING.

Emma shut her eyes and pictured Ethan’s face, his raven hair and lake-blue eyes, and the way he’d looked at her, a way no boy had ever looked at her before. Her body flooded with desire and relief.

“Who’s that from?” Charlotte leaned over the table, nearly impaling her boobs on the cactus arrangement. Emma covered the screen with her hand.

“You’re blushing!” Laurel pointed a finger at Emma. “Is it a new boyfriend? Is that why you ran out on Garrett last night?”

“It’s just Mom.” Emma quickly deleted the text. Sutton’s friends wouldn’t understand why she’d left her birthday bash with Ethan, a mysterious boy who was more interested in stargazing than popularity. But Ethan was the sanest person Emma had met in Tucson so far—and the only person who knew who she really was and why she was here.

“So what exactly happened with Garrett?” Charlotte pursed her glossy, blackberry-tinted lips. From what Emma had gleaned in the past two weeks, Charlotte was the bossiest of their four-girl clique—and also the most insecure about her looks. She wore way too much makeup and talked too loudly, as though no one would listen to what she had to say otherwise.

Emma jabbed the ice at the bottom of her Bloody Mary with her straw. Garrett. Right. Garrett Austin was Sutton’s boyfriend—or, more accurately, ex-boyfriend. Last night, his birthday gift to Sutton had been his naked, willing body and a pack of Trojans.

It had been painful to see the shattered look on my boyfriend’s face when Emma rejected him. I could only guess at what our time together had been like, but I knew our relationship hadn’t been a joke. Although now he probably thought that’s what it had been to me.

Laurel’s crystal-clear blue eyes narrowed as she took a sip of her drink. “Why did you run out on him? Does he look freaky naked? Does he have a third nipple?”

Emma shook her head. “None of that. It’s my deal, not his.”