Star just grins at me. “You’ve been to prison Ash,” she says. “Toughen up a little.” Then she throws her curtain of long, inky-black hair over her shoulder, picks up the box she was working on and walks out of the room.

Goddamn, I think, feeling the confusing scared/turned on feeling well up inside me as I watch her body sway as she walks away. I’m in way over my head.

Star

“So . . . ?” Autumn sidles up next to me, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. I blink at her.

“So?” I prompt, pulling open another box. I peer down at the contents. Old magazines. Again. I sigh and replace the lid and pull one of the permanent markers out of my pocket. I use my teeth to uncap it, and scrawl garbage in crooked letters across the top before hefting the box to the side and starting on the next one. The sheer amount of money my mother spent on magazines astounds me. I could have paid my entire first year’s tuition just on what I’ve found so far. And most of it was going straight into the trash. We’d salvaged what we could, and had filled up bin after bin of recycling, but the terrible condition of most of the stuff made it impossible to save.

“Soooo . . . ?” Autumn draws out the word like it’s full of syllables, which, considering she’s an English major, she should know better. I turn and look over my shoulder at her. She’s bouncing on her toes like a little kid with a secret. Oh god. “What’s going on with you and Ash?”

My eyes go wide and I scan the room to see if he overheard her, but he’s off in the dining room, working his way through the leaning tower of newspapers, and luckily he doesn’t look up. I turn back to her. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I hiss under my breath, hoping against hope that she’ll take the hint and be quiet.

Unfortunately, my panic doesn’t seem to register, and she keeps going. “I mean the looks between the two of you . . . ” She waggles her eyebrows at me, grinning. “It’s like there’s fireworks going off in the room every time you meet each other’s eyes.”

“Shut. Up.” I mutter as quietly as possible, and look over my shoulder at Ash, just to make sure he can’t hear her. But he still isn’t looking at us. Instead he’s staring down at one of the newspapers, and the sheets of newsprint are trembling a little in his hands. My brow furrows, and I move to take a step closer, to reach out and ask him what’s wrong. But before I can take a single step, he shakes his head like he’s coming out of a fog and tears the top page off the newspaper. As I watch, he tosses the rest of the paper aside and slowly, carefully, folds up the piece he tore off and slides it into his pocket.

What on earth?

Autumn nudges me, but I don’t turn back to her. Not yet. Instead I watch as Ash takes a deep breath and presses the heels of his hands into his eyes for a moment. Then he lets out a sigh and scrubs his fingers up through his hair, leaving the pale strands sticking up in wild tufts.

“Hey, Ash . . . ?” The words are out of my mouth so quickly I can’t believe I’m the one who actually uttered them. Ash reacts with a jolt and turns to look at me, and I can see something in his eyes for a brief second, something almost haunted, before he manages to compose himself and nod at me. “You okay?” But I can see from here that no matter how he answers, the real answer is no. He’s not okay.

But he just nods and I let it go. Whatever’s bothering him, it’s not my place to bring it up in front of Autumn. If he wants to tell me, he’ll tell me. If not, well . . . that’s his decision.

He reaches down and hefts up the rest of the pile of newspaper, a stack about a foot and a half high, and makes his way toward the door. His path brings him right past Autumn and I, and as he passes I reach over and run a hand down his arm. Our eyes meet and we pause there for a second, frozen in our own little world.

“Fireworks,” Autumn says, and my entire body jolts and I yank my hand away like it’s been burned. I turn and glare at her, but she just smirks at me.

“What’s that?” Ash says, confusion lacing his voice.

“Nothing,” I mutter, and try to turn away and go back to work before I’m forced to kill my former roommate in cold blood. My heart is slamming so hard in my chest that it’s a wonder no one else can hear it. To me, it’s absolutely thundering. Dammit, Autumn.

But she isn’t done, and I have yet to figure out how to kill people with my brain, so she turns to Ash and I can feel her sunbeam-smile from where I’m standing, even though my back is turned. “Fireworks,” she says, and pauses because she’s trying to kill me. Just as I’m about to whirl around and drag her out of the room kicking and screaming—and probably laughing her ass off—she continues. “I was just telling Star that Roth and I are taking you guys out to see the fireworks tonight.”

Wait. What? I turn to look at her, and I’m more than a little concerned when I see the glint in her eye.

“Fireworks,” Ash says, like the word is unfamiliar to him and he’s testing it out for the first time. I catch his eye and we come to a silent agreement that Autumn is insane. At least, I think that’s what that look means.

“Yup,” Autumn says, her voice light and perky, turning herself into a bouncy cotton-candy-for-brains version of herself, which she always does when she’s lying and doesn’t want to get caught. I’m going to kill her for this. Dead. Gone. And then I’m taking her book collection.

And burning it, out of spite.

Well, not all of it. There’s a bunch I want for myself.

“We saw a flyer when we were heading to the B&B last night,” she says. “Apparently there’s a big fireworks festival down at the beach tonight, and we thought it’d be fun for all of us to go watch it.” She turns to me and pins me with what I’m hoping isn’t as super-obvious a look as I think it is.

“Together,” she adds. Because she’s evil.

Ash

I haven’t seen fireworks since I was a kid, so I can’t be sure, but I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed them as much as I did tonight. And I barely even looked at the explosions. I was too distracted by Star.

I don’t know what it was. Maybe it was how relaxed she was, how happy she was to be around her friends, but she was glowing nearly as brightly as the fireworks themselves.

Autumn had insisted that heading down to the fireworks was necessary, and she’d had this look in her eye that even my own mom had never quite been able to pull off with me. The one that said you’re doing this and you will not argue. Or else. But honestly, until she’d said something, I hadn’t even remembered that the town did fireworks every year, even though it made total sense. Who didn’t do fireworks on the Fourth of July? But if someone had just asked me out of the blue if I was interested, the answer would have been fuck no.

But she hadn’t asked me first. She’d asked Star. And, after the initial shock on her face had passed, the smile that had spread across Star’s face turned my answer from fuck no to hell yes before I could blink. Before I’d even realized what was happening, all four of us were bundled into serial-killer-dude’s truck with a blanket, a bottle of Autumn’s homemade wine, a couple six-packs and a grocery bag full of hot dogs and buns. I was going to leave Bruiser tied up in the backyard, but Star had been afraid that the fireworks would scare him off—which, okay, they hadn’t bothered him as a puppy, but he’d been on his own for years while I was in prison; I had no idea what would freak him out now—and told me to bring him along.