Tate was awesome.

“So, how does everyone know?” I asked, remembering the principal’s now useless advice of keeping my trouble a secret. “Was there a press release or something?”

“Tate doesn’t keep things from me. You know that. And, yes,” he continued, “there was a sort of press release. Liam, your asswipe ex, posted it on Facebook.”

I halted in the middle of the parking lot.

“What?” I burst out, every muscle in my body tightening.

“Let it go.” He tried to calm me. “Damage is done, and he got what was coming to him. Jax put a nice, fat fist in his gut.”

Dropping my head back, I closed my eyes to the sky and felt my chest flood with emotions so strong my nerve endings felt like sparklers. Burning, sizzling, searing sparklers.

“Unbelievable.” I sighed. So that was why Jax had jumped Liam last week. It wasn’t about the incident between him and me at the party but about Liam humiliating me publicly on social media.

“Don’t get mad at Jax,” he scolded. “It would’ve been worse for Liam if Madoc and I had been there, too. Fuck,” he continued, “if Tate had been there? Yeah.”

Yeah. Tate would’ve done even worse to him.

I shook my head. People—hundreds of old classmates and Liam’s family members—were now laughing at me.

Now I wanted to put a fat fist in his gut. Was this how Tate felt when she’d finally had enough? I suddenly felt as if I were five and wanted to push people.

I heaved out sigh after sigh, remembering that Jared was still sitting on the phone. Jared. Tate’s boyfriend. A guy I’d kissed before they were together. Tate’s boyfriend. Yeah.

“Why are you calling me?” I asked finally, getting to the point.

He was silent for a few moments, and my other hand started tapping my leg. Jared never called me.

I heard him suck in a long breath. “Relax. Tate knows I’m calling. I just want to know”—he trailed off, hesitating—“how my brother is doing,” he finally finished.

Jax? Why would Jared be asking me that? And then I remembered Jared and Jax’s fight when Jax was in the nurse’s office.

“Um … ,” I drawled out, trying to find an innocent reply but thinking about the weight room and the Loop. “I’m not sure how to answer that, actually.”

“Does he look healthy?”

“Healthy?” I repeated. I thought of Jax’s muscles that had seemed to double in size in the last two years and the bright white smiles he wore on the field when I tried not staring at him out the window. “Yes. Very,” I said.

“What does he do with his days?”

“Jared, what’s going on?” I prodded.

Jared calling me. Weird. Jared asking me about Jax. Weird. Jared acting worried about anyone other than Tate or himself. Very weird.

“Sorry,” he offered, sounding unusually embarrassed. “It’s just that you’re right next door. I don’t think it’s escaped your notice how much weight he has to throw around, right? The changes at the house. The Loop. I just want to make sure he’s okay.”

“He’s your brother. Ask him.”

“I have,” he shot out. “And I have no reason to suspect he’s not okay. I’m just not there, and I … I …”

I raised my eyebrows, finding his stuttering amusing.

“I just hate not being there,” he finished. “I need to make sure he’s happy and taken care of, is all.”

Hmm … I started walking again, thinking about how worried Jared must be if he resorted to calling me. “Well, everything seems fine.” Not normal but fine.

“Fine.” He started laughing. “You really have no idea, do you?”

I rounded the parking lot and stepped onto the sidewalk, my heels digging into the concrete. “What are you talking about?”

He paused long enough to piss me off. “Kind of convenient how the state of Arizona let you come all the way back to your hometown to complete your community service, huh?”

I pinched my eyebrows together. “Well, why wouldn’t they?”

Yeah, why wouldn’t they?

“Mmm-hmm,” he teased. “And it’s pretty awesome that you’re sitting all comfy in your old high school tutoring a subject you love instead of cleaning up trash on the freeway, isn’t it?”

I slowed to a stop on the sidewalk under a canopy of trees.

Principal Masters didn’t know where the e-mail had come from to suggest me for the tutoring at the school.

I let out a breath.

And Arizona let me out without bail.

I clenched the phone.

And the judge let me off with no fines when the standard penalty for a first offense carried a minimum two-hundred-fifty-dollar penalty.

I could barely whisper the question. “What are you saying?”

“Nothing,” he chirped. “I don’t know shit. See you in a couple of weeks, Trouble.”

And he hung up.

Rocks flew across the street as I kicked the gravel on my walk home.

Jared sucked.

What the hell was he trying to tell me?

Oh, I knew what he was trying to tell me. I wasn’t an idiot. Sometimes I was a dipshit, but I definitely wasn’t an idiot.

I mean, did Jax really have the pull to get my community service transferred from one state to the other? And then Jared suggested that Jax got my placement at the high school, too?

I shook my head, my eyes wandering as I tossed his words around in my head.

Yeah. No. For one, Jax didn’t have that kind of power. Two, Jax wouldn’t care. And three?

Jared sucked.

And Jax sucked, too. They both acted as if they had the whole damn world figured out, and everyone else was clueless.

“Okay,” I thought out loud, letting out a sigh and ignoring the whistles from cars passing by.

“Jax could’ve suggested me to Principal Masters when he heard I was coming back to town. But …” I paused, mumbling to myself, as Fuel’s “Hemorrhage” played through my earbuds. “Jax wouldn’t have known I enjoyed writing. In fact, I’d be a hell of a lot happier picking up garbage on the side of the road,” I grumbled.

“Hey, baby!” a male voice yelled out the passenger window of a car passing by.

I flipped him off without looking up.

I didn’t know why guys thought cattle-calling was sexy. It wasn’t as if I was dressed to impress or anything.

Even though all the other tutors dressed casually, I’d stuck to my skirts or dress shorts and nice blouses, hoping to at least look as though I hadn’t been forced by the state to be there.

And even though I hadn’t seen my mother, I knew she’d be disappointed if she saw me dressing unprofessionally in a professional situation.

But I had taken one risk.

Tate left behind some purple Chucks that went well with the white shorts and lavender peasant blouse I’d worn today, so I took a chance.

“And also,” I continued out loud, talking to myself, “I definitely don’t enjoy tutoring. No one that knew me would think I had the temperament to teach, and Jax had to know that much about me.”

“Those kids don’t need an attitude adjustment. You do.”

I stuck my hands in my pockets, narrowing my eyes.

Kids. Those kids. Guilt crept up on me. I might have been only three years older than them, but technically speaking, I was the adult. They were youths needing direction, inspiration, and encouragement.

And I was failing them.

I walked and walked, thinking about Jax’s words, thinking about Tate telling me to get wild, thinking about all the things I could’ve done differently the past two weeks in tutoring.

I walked up streets I’d only ever driven through and down lanes where I’d seen the seasons change so beautifully growing up. It was funny how much I enjoyed walking now. Even though I was sweating, and my hair, flatironed and shiny this morning, was now stuffed into a high, messy bun, my head felt clear.

And I’d finally come to a conclusion.

“Juliet? You could serve God, serve your country, or serve the ones you love, but to find true happiness you must always serve someone or something other than yourself.”

My dad. He told me that one day when he was still in the hospital, on a rare occasion he didn’t think I was my sister. One of the last times anyone other than Shane called me Juliet.

Walking past Tate’s house, past Jax’s house where I noticed Madoc’s GTO parked, I continued the few blocks until I reached my house. My house that had never felt like a home once my dad left.

Looking up at the two-story redbrick Colonial, I clenched the fists in my pockets as my chest flooded with heat.

My mother wasn’t going to be happy.

I reached for the door handle but pulled back, wondering if I was supposed to knock. Swallowing the sudden rush of saliva in my mouth, I fisted the handle and gritted my teeth.

And pushed through the unlocked door.

“Mother?” I called out, stepping calmly into the foyer.

The scent of lemon furniture polish hit me, and my nose started to sting. If I didn’t know better, I’d say the light hardwood floors were soaked in it. Everything shone, from my left to my right. Up the sterile white walls of the staircase to the glimmering tabletops in the dining and living rooms.