Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 73233 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 366(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73233 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 366(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)
She’d done her own hair. Pinned it up like she always did, and then taken it down and left it loose around her shoulders, because he’d only ever seen it pinned and she wanted one thing, just one, to be different from the version of herself that he’d destroyed.
She checked her reflection in the rearview mirror. Green eyes. Freckles. Red hair past her shoulders. A girl going to prom alone. A girl who’d been brave and gotten her heart ripped out for the trouble, and who was putting on a twelve-dollar dress and showing up anyway, because that was who she was. The girl who ran toward things. Even when the things ran away.
“Okay,” she said aloud. To no one. To herself. To whatever version of Katy Gates was going to walk through those doors and survive the next four hours. “Okay.”
She got out of the car. Smoothed her skirt. Squared her shoulders and lifted her chin and walked across the parking lot toward the gymnasium doors, where the bass was thumping through the walls and the string lights glowed in the windows and someone inside was laughing, and the sound of that laughter was the loneliest thing she’d ever heard.
Head high. Heart in pieces.
She went in.
Chapter 5
THE GYMNASIUM SMELLED like fake fog and warm bodies and the particular chemical sweetness of a rented smoke machine working overtime. Katy stood near the punch table with a plastic cup in her hand and told herself she was fine.
She wasn’t fine. But the green dress was doing its job, and her hair was doing its job, and she was upright and present and not crying in a bathroom stall, so by the standards of the last four days, she was exceptional.
The theme was “Starlight Serenade,” which meant someone had stapled silver streamers to the ceiling and hung paper stars from fishing line and aimed three spotlights at a mirrored ball that sent scattered diamonds of light across the basketball court floor. The DJ was playing a heavy bass line. A group of senior girls in sequined dresses were laughing near the photo booth. Two boys from Katy’s English class were attempting a dance move that resembled a wrestling hold.
She sipped the punch. It was too sweet, the red kind that stained your teeth, and she held it against her chest like a prop because having something in her hands meant she didn’t have to figure out what to do with them.
“You look like you’re having a terrible time.”
The voice came from her left. She turned.
He was tall. Not Julian tall, not that specific height that had become her body’s calibration for every other man who walked into a room, but tall enough. Brown hair, brown eyes, a face that was handsome in the easy, uncomplicated way of someone who’d grown up knowing he was handsome and hadn’t let it ruin him. He wore a dark suit that fit too well for a high school prom, and he was gripping his own cup of red punch with the same careful, prop-like hold she was using.
“That obvious?” she asked.
“You’re standing at the punch table alone in a dress that’s too pretty for this gymnasium, and you haven’t moved in six minutes.” He smiled. It was a good smile, warm and unbothered, and it didn’t do a single thing to her nervous system. “I’m Reid.”
“Katy.”
“I know. You’re Dionne’s sister, right? I’ve seen you at Haven.”
She stiffened. Haven. The name struck her like a hand on a bruise, and she must have shown it, because his smile gentled.
“Sorry. Wrong topic?”
“It’s fine.” It wasn’t fine. Nothing with the word Haven in it was fine. “I don’t work there anymore.”
“Got it. New topic.” He took a sip of his punch and made a face. “This tastes like melted crayons.”
“It really does.”
“Who authorized this?”
“The prom committee. They also authorized the fog machine, which I think is just a humidifier with ideas.”
His laugh was genuine, surprised, and she felt a loosening in her chest. Not warmth. Not attraction. Just the unclenching that happened when someone treated you like a person instead of a problem.
“Reid Jamieson,” he offered, extending his hand. “Senator Jamieson’s grandson, if that matters to anyone here, which it shouldn’t but probably does. I’m chaperoning. My grandfather’s on the school board and he volunteered me.” He surveyed the dance floor with the amiable resignation of a man who’d been volunteered for things his entire life. “I was promised there’d be a chocolate fountain.”
“There is,” Katy said, and pointed to the far corner where the fountain was indeed gurgling, surrounded by a ring of strawberries and pretzels and one sophomore who was dangerously close to dipping his entire forearm. “Its structural integrity is questionable.”
“Everything about this event’s structural integrity is questionable.” He was taking her in with a kindness she hadn’t expected, his brown eyes reading her face with an attentiveness that wasn’t hunger or heat but gentler. Recognition, maybe. The expression of a person who’d learned to spot sadness in other people because he’d carried his own. “Do you want to dance?”