Chapter One

CASSIDY

“DO YOU EVEN know anyone who’s going to be there, Ty?”

“Just Gage. But this will be good, this way we’ll be able to meet new people right away.”

I grumbled to myself. I wasn’t the best at making friends; they didn’t understand my need to always be near Tyler, and when I’d show up with bruises or stitches, everyone automatically thought I was either hurting myself or Tyler and I were in an abusive relationship. Of course that wasn’t their fault; we never responded to them, so the rumors continued to fly.

“Cassi, no one will have any idea about your past, the last of your bruises will be gone in a few weeks, and you’re gone from there now. Besides, I hate that you don’t have anyone else. Trust me, I understand it, but I hate it for you. You need more people in your life.”

“I know.” I instinctively wrapped my arms around myself, covering where some of the bruises were. Thank God none were visible right now unless I stripped down to my skivvies, but I couldn’t say the same for some of the scars. At least scars were normal on a person, and the worst of them were covered by my clothes, so I just looked like I was accident-prone.

“Hey.” Tyler grabbed one of my hands, taking it away from my side. “It’s over, it will never happen again. And I’m always here for you, whether you make new friends or not. I’m here. But at least try. This is your chance at starting a new life—isn’t that what that favorite bird of yours is all about anyway?”

“The phoenix isn’t a real bird, Ty.”

“Whatever, it’s your favorite. Isn’t that what they symbolize? New beginnings?”

“Rebirth and renewal,” I muttered.

“Yeah, same thing. They die only to come back and start a new life, right? This is us starting a new life, Cass.” He shook his head slightly and his face went completely serious. “But don’t spontaneously burst into flames and die. I love you too much and a fire wouldn’t be good for the leather seats.”

I huffed a laugh and shoved his shoulder with my free hand. “You’re such a punk, Ty; way to kill the warm and fuzzy moment you had going there.”

He laughed out loud. “In all seriousness”—he kissed my hand, then met and held my gaze for a few seconds before looking back at the road—“new life, Cassi, and it starts right now.”

Tyler and I weren’t romantically involved, but we had a relationship that even people we’d grown up with didn’t understand.

We grew up just a house away from each other, in a country club neighborhood. Both our fathers were doctors; our moms were the kind that stayed home with the kids and spent afternoons at the club gossiping and drinking martinis. On my sixth birthday, my dad died from a heart attack—while he was at work of all places. Now that I’m older, I don’t understand how no one was able to save him; he worked in the ER, for crying out loud, and no one was able to save him? But at the time, I just knew my hero was gone.

Dad worked long hours, but I was his princess, and when he was home, it was just the two of us. He’d brave tiaras and boas to have tea parties with me; he knew the names of all of my stuffed animals, talked to them like they would respond; and he would always be the one to tell me stories at night. My mom was amazing, but she knew we had a special relationship, so she always stayed in the door frame, watching and smiling. Whenever I would get hurt, if he was at work, Mom would make a big show of how she couldn’t make it better, and I’d have to hang on for dear life until Dad got home. She must have called him, because he would run into the house like I was dying—even though it was almost always just a scratch—pick me up, and place a Band-Aid wherever I was hurt, and miraculously I was all better. Like I said, my dad was my hero. Every little girl needs a dad like that. But now, other than precious memories, all I have left of him is his love for the phoenix. Mom had let Dad have his way with a large outline of a phoenix painted directly above my bed for when I started kindergarten, a painting that’s still there today, though Mom constantly threatened to paint over it. And although I tried to keep a ring he’d had all his adult life with a phoenix on it, my mom had found and hidden it not long after he died, and I hadn’t seen it since.

My mom started drinking obsessively when he died. Her morning coffee always had rum in it, by ten in the morning she was making margaritas, she’d continue to go to the club for martinis, and by the time I was home from school, she was drinking scotch or vodka straight out of the bottle. She made time for her girlfriends but stopped waking me up for school, stopped making me food, forgot to pick me up from school—pretty much just forgot I even existed. After that first day of being forgotten at school, and the next day not showing up because she wouldn’t leave her room, Tyler’s mom, Stephanie, started taking me to and from school without a word. She knew my mom was grieving, just not the extent of it.

After a week with no clean clothes and a few rounds of trial and error, I began doing my own laundry, attempted to figure out my homework by myself, and would make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for both of us, always leaving one outside her bedroom door. Almost a year after Dad’s death, Jeff came into the picture. He was rich, ran some big company—his last name was everywhere in Mission Viejo, California—but up until that day I’d never seen or heard of him. One day Stephanie dropped me off and he was just moved in, my mom already married to him.