Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
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Edge of Bliss
East of Redemption
Depths of Salvation
Edge of Brotherhood
Edge of Regret
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Liz Pelletier, Publisher
UNCORRECTED GALLEY PROOF
Not for sale or redistribution.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2019 by Molly E. Lee. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.
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Entangled Teen is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.
Visit our website at www.entangledpublishing.com.
Edited by Stacy Abrams
Cover design by Molly E. Lee and Heather Howland
Cover images by
Getty Images/maciek905
Getty Images/CoffeeAndMilk
Interior images by Molly E. Lee and iStock/art-sonik
Interior design by Heather Howland
Print ISBN 978-1-64063-658-3
Ebook ISBN 978-1-64063-659-0
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Edition May 2019
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For n0decaf
Prologue
Amber
NightLocker: Please talk to me
NightLocker: Let me explain
NightLocker: Pixie...I’m sorry
NightLocker: There are things you don’t understand
I tucked my fingers under my arms, ignoring the tingle to respond immediately.
Damn straight I don’t understand.
Betrayal stung like a paper cut while opening a package of lemonade mix.
My heart hurt. Like, I’d been burned before…but this? This physically turned my stomach and seared my chest.
This…
This was true heartbreak.
This was can’t sleep, can’t eat unless it’s chocolate, can’t breathe without sharp spikes rattling my lungs, relentless heartbreak.
NightLocker: Give me a chance
NightLocker: I can make this right
NightLocker: I want to...
NightLocker: I need you...DC remember? Doesn’t that mean anything to you anymore?
Tears stung my eyes as I read his pleas. His use of our secret word, a code that had become something so much more than a warning. Something as vital as breathing and as true as the ache in my heart.
Some deep part of me, the one he’d branded his name on, wanted to forgive him. Needed to.
Because who was I to judge…after what I’d done?
I should forgive him. I should tell him the truth about what I knew.
But what was the point? Once he uncovered it…once he learned what I’d really done…
He’d hate me.
I reached for the keyboard, the motion almost painful.
NightLocker: I need you...DC remember? Doesn’t that mean anything anymore?
PixieBurn: everything & nothing
NightLocker: Amber
NightLocker: Please
NightLocker: What does that even mean?
I paused my response, choking back a sob.
It didn’t matter. He’d find out soon enough.
Might as well endure the break now.
I just wished like hell it didn’t have to hurt so damn much.
PixieBurn: It means
PixieBurn: Hack my gear like this again
PixieBurn: for a chat
PixieBurn: for help
PixieBurn: for anything
PixieBurn: and I’ll crash your entire system
I hated myself a fraction more with each message sent.
NightLocker: No!
NightLocker: Amber
NightLocker: Listen to me
God, did I want to. I wanted him to not be breaking into my system, showing up on my screen…I wanted him here. Telling me we could find our way back to common ground or, hell, hit the reset button and start fresh. Erase every dark piece of our past.
But this was real life.
And it was heavy and hard and harsh.
PixieBurn: goodbye, Dean
I logged off and shut my gear down. He couldn’t find me if I wasn’t online.
Unless he shows up at my door…again.
My heart skipped at the thought—it was betraying me as much as he had.
I’d barely survived his friendship, his light.
I certainly wouldn’t survive his hate, his disappointment, the way he’d judge me when he knew…
Chapter One
Amber
Six months earlier…
“And then I actually got the condom out of the wrapper,” Hannah whispered as we walked toward the largest seminar room in Wilmont Academy. “But I wasn’t expecting it to be…slimy”—a shudder rippled her long blond hair—“so I freaked. And that freak-out resulted in me kneeing his junk.” She clenched her eyes shut, rubbing her palms over her face. “It was a disaster. Jake is probably going to dump me.”
“No, he isn’t,” I said, resting my hand on her shoulder. We stopped outside the lecture room doors as the rest of the school filed in. “You’ve been together, what? Eight years?” I asked, totally blanking on the actual mileage of their relationship.
“Ten,”
she said, sighing. “It was the second grade when he asked to trade sandwiches—”
“And you’ve been in love ever since,” I finished for her.
I’d heard the classic tale of love at first sight over a hundred times. Hannah and Jake were the perfect couple—they challenged each other, supported each other, and, well, they loved each other.
“In all that time,” I said, lowering my voice to ensure we weren’t overheard, “you never once put it on for him?” I wished I could ask the question without blushing, but no matter how hard I tried, it was useless. Hannah was my best friend. I knew all about her sex life with Jake, but I had little experience myself. Whenever we talked about it, I felt like zero help.
She shook her head. “He always does it.”
“Why try to switch it up?”
“Because,” she said, shrugging, “I was, like, trying to be adventurous. I don’t know. It was a total, horrid fail.” She glanced toward the seminar room and lowered her voice to barely a whisper. “You think Ms. Conner will cover the art of rolling a condom onto your boyfriend’s dick in the ‘sexual awareness’ assembly today?” Hannah put the words in perfectly timed air quotes.
A laugh ripped from my lips, and soon she giggled with me. The tension broke for a moment before reality crashed it hard. “No,” I said. “She won’t.”
Every year on the first week of school, the students of Wilmont Academy were ushered into seminar room #3 for an education on the dangers of being sexually active. Wilmont might be the last non-religious school on the planet still operating under the abstinence only policy.
“This is such a waste of time,” I whispered. “If they’re not actually going to teach us anything about healthy sex, then they could at least use this time to talk about more important things.”
“Like what?” Hannah asked, looking happy to delay entering the room for as long as possible.
I shrugged. “Maybe a lecture on sexual harassment? Or voting awareness—some of us are actually old enough to vote now. Or the double standards between boys and girls in this school?”
“Whoa,” Hannah said, her eyebrows climbing high on her forehead. “Someone ate her feminist Wheaties this morning.”
I chuckled, waving her off. “I’m just saying those things would—might—have more of an impact than this.” I jerked my head toward the door. “Everyone tunes this out because barely anyone in school actually believes in abstinence.”
“Ugh,” she groaned, pushing off the wall and turning into the room.
Our chat had forced us to the back of the long line of students piling in, and that meant the only available seats were front row and, miserably, center. We both swallowed our groans as we sank into the practically spotlighted chairs.
Hannah leaned close to me while Ms. Conner shuffled her note cards behind the podium on the stage not three feet from us. “Cosmo makes me feel like I’m in way over my head,” she whispered into my ear. “My mom would have a legit aneurism if I tried to broach the subject with her. You’re the only sister I have…” She winked at me. “And I tried typing it into Google—”
“Omigod, you didn’t.” I clamped my hands over my mouth.
“Totally did. Totally regret it.” Another shudder shook her body. “Blech,” she said, sticking out her tongue. “Don’t ever Google anything with…” She huffed. “Just don’t Google. It’s dangerous.”
We laughed until the sound of the doors sealing shut rang out like a prison sentence. The lights dimmed enough to illuminate the giant screen behind Ms. Conner, who clung to the note cards like a lifeline.
Principal Tanner stood at attention in the front right corner of the room, just to the side of the screen. His arms were crossed tightly over his chest, but the navy suit he wore wouldn’t dare wrinkle. Not only was he the stiffest, strictest human being I’d ever met, but so was his wardrobe. It was no wonder he’d forced me and my fellow classmates into a suffocating uniform that sucked creativity and individuality from everyone who wore it. No use trying to be yourself at Wilmont—not when Principal Tanner was dead set on pumping out legions of worker drones.
I shifted in my seat, itching to pull out my laptop and play with a tricky set of code that had been giving me a headache since this morning. The security measures around the site were a real jerk, but I’d crack it eventually. Though, I’d be just as willing to start Googling, as Hannah had warned me not to do, if it meant I wouldn’t have to pay attention to this.
One more look at Principal Tanner shot down that blissful idea. I didn’t need to give him another reason to hate me. He barely tolerated my presence with my pixie-cut dark hair—the left side streaked with a few strands of light pink.
Also, my mom was an erotica author.
I got away with the hair because it was technically within the school’s guidelines of not being distracting enough to draw away from academics. The erotica author mom was easier to get away with because she donated boatloads of cash to extracurricular activities in need. Tanner would be selfish to question her motives because her profession “disgusts me”—as he’d once boldly told me when I’d been caught chatting with my ex over messenger instead of working on actual class work during computer science last year.
I crossed one leg over the other, satisfied that underneath the horribly thick black pants I wore as required by “school policy,” I could feel the warmth of my purple-and-pink-striped socks. They were enough to earn me detention, but he’d never see them.
Ms. Conner paced around the podium situated on the stage, the massive white projector screen behind her. She had to be the sweetest, gentlest, and clearly the most uncomfortable one in the room. Her pale pink sweater hugged her tiny shoulders, the light blue blouse she wore underneath tightly tucked into a floor-length black skirt. Tanner hand-selected our school nurse to run this assembly every year, even though she fumbled over her words whenever the discussion even came close to sex. Which it rarely did at Wilmont.
“What about someone else?” I finally whispered back at Hannah.
“What, like a teacher?” she scoffed, her blue eyes narrowing on Ms. Conner.
“Or, I don’t know,” I said, glancing to the right, where the most popular seniors sat. Girls like Sabrina and Morgan. The ones with shiny hair and perfectly polished nails. The ones who always looked like they walked off the pages of Teen Vogue. “Them?” It wasn’t a secret that Sabrina and Morgan’s clique knew their way around guys…and girls…or sometimes both at the same time, if the rumors were to be believed.
Brandon included. Not that I cared where my ex-boyfriend had wound up.
“You’re joking, right?”
“I’m trying to help.”
“I know,” she said. “But seriously? If I approached them it would be all over school in, like, two seconds.”
“So?” I said. “Everyone knows you and Jake have been together forever. Who cares?”
“I know that,” she answered. “But I would rather the entire school not know I’m a complete loser when it comes to this kind of stuff. Just because we’ve done it multiple times doesn’t mean I’m confident I know what I’m doing.”
My cheeks heated again. “If you’re a loser, that makes me a social reject.”
“You know I didn’t mean it like that.” She wrapped her arm around my shoulders.
“It’s fine.” I shrugged. “Look, I’m not dying to hand out my V-card, but I hate t
hat I’m totally useless to you right now. You should be able to talk to someone about this stuff and not feel like you’re breaking the damn law.”
She giggled. “It always feels like that.”
“It shouldn’t.”
“Well,” she said, lowering her voice even more despite the chatter in the room. “It may not be that way anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
Hannah glanced around to make sure no one was listening. “You know my mom’s on the review board, right? The one Tanner answers to?”
“Yeah.”
“I overheard her talking to Dad last night. More like venting. She was going on and on about the start-of-year meeting. How Tanner had dug his heels in when some other board members suggested a more progressive change to the school rules.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. Looks like a lot of people think this approach is outdated. But he swore up and down that this has been the way Wilmont has done things for decades. Brought up his grandfather and his father who were principals before him.” She rolled her eyes. “Claimed that his approach equated to better standard test scores and more Ivy League college acceptances.”
“Wow.” I was stunned that anyone would try to go up against Tanner. Stunned and awed. It was about time someone pushed for change at this school.
Sure, Wilmont had the best academics program in the state—the sole reason my parents, and many others, tolerated the school’s more archaic rules—but I thought it was more detrimental than helpful. Trying to keep my friends and me ignorant on sexual health was ridiculous.
“I know,” Hannah said, drawing me to the present. “Mom said they gave him a year to prove it—she didn’t mention how—but if we thought he was strict before, I can’t imagine what he’ll be like now that his job is on the line.”
I chewed on my lip, gazing behind Ms. Conner.
Dean Winters sat at the desk to her left, clicking away on the keyboard, his blue-gray eyes flitting over the monitor screen. He was dubbed Wilmont’s resident genius hacker—mostly because his older brother, Sean, had made a name for himself here before graduating two years ago—but I wasn’t far behind Dean’s skill level.
We’d made a game of topping each other in our coding class, but he had this laid-back calm about him that always combated my can’t-sit-still-for-one-second persona that drove me nuts. I was certain Dean didn’t need any advice on the stuff Hannah and I were talking about. He was wicked gorgeous, and though he likely could have his pick of any girl at Wilmont, he flew solo on the reg.