Chapter 31

Neve

“Okay, so last time doesn’t count,” Ellie says, hooking her arm through mine as we cross Main Street. “You went into Second Chances with Kayla’s daddy’s money, grabbed everything black in your size in twenty minutes, and left. That’s not shopping. That’s a getaway.”

She’s not wrong. The day before my first shift at The Den, I spent the money Kayla’s father paid for my ruined things on whatever would make Blake’s jaw clench the hardest. It worked. But I didn’t look at a single price tag, and I didn’t enjoy one minute of it.

This is the first time I’ve been into town without a shift waiting at the end of it, or a guard breathing down my neck.

I didn’t think it would feel like this. The snow on Main Street is plowed into gray banks along the curb. The feed store has a hand-painted sign advertising salt licks. A truck rumbles past with a dog in the back, ears flapping. Normal, ordinary, small-town things, and I keep stopping to look at them as if I’ve