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There were times when I could feel the tears coming and I had to pinch myself hard to stop them from overflowing and spilling out onto my cheeks. There was a time for tears, and it wasn’t in front of anyone else. I didn’t want to let myself cry until this was all over—until the Angels had paid their dues, until Jake was safe, until it seemed possible for there to be a life after all this madness.
     
    As I’m toweling my long, dark hair dry my cell vibrates insistently with an incoming message. I don’t even need to look at it to know it’s from Jake.
     
    I hate it when we fight, make it up to you tomorrow night at The Hideaway? Jx
     
    I can’t help smiling as I read it. I know exactly what he means—arguing with Jake is the last thing I like to do. With Suzie we had been The Three Musketeers, but now it was just the two of us and I wasn’t about to let a few angry words pull us apart.
     
    Alright, but you’re buying, Summers. Ax I reply, wondering how long it’s going to take for me to forget the way his touch on my cheek had made me feel warm between my thighs and how I’d suddenly become aware of every part of my body, from the tips of my toes to the longest hair on my head.
     
    I stand in front of the mirror as I rake my fingers through my wet hair, already starting to dry in its customary waves. I inspect my face and wonder what it is that Jake sees when he looks at me. My skin is a light caramel color that comes from my dad’s Cherokee heritage, and my eyes are green almonds that are exactly like my mom’s.
     
    I’ve always thought that my mouth looks too big for my face—when I was a kid I’d always tried to put my hand over my lips in photos because I was so paranoid about it.
     
    I let the damp towel drop to the floor and examine the body reflected in the glass. My breasts are nothing to write home about, since they’re probably on the smaller side of things and it didn’t look like they were going to fill out anymore anytime soon.
     
    I trace my hands over my flat stomach and towards the dark mound of hair between my thighs. I imagine that my hand is Jake’s and feel a familiar warmth bloom in my pussy. I’m about to delve down deeper to the wetness that I know is starting to pool between my long legs, when I suddenly realize what I’m doing and hurriedly cover myself with the towel.
     
    I look in the mirror to find that my cheeks are flushed and my hands are a little shaky. What the hell was that? I ask myself. One little touch from someone you’ve known since you were a kid and you go all needy and crazy , the little voice tells me. That’s what happens when you’re a stone’s throw away from twenty and still a virgin, I guess.
     
    I give myself a little shake, trying to dispel the feeling of need that is still racing around my body, but as I concentrate on putting on a fresh buttercup-yellow uniform before I head out to the diner, I can still feel the heat between my thighs.
     
    I kiss my mother goodbye on her dry cheek and walk past the calendar that I keep by the door, where I keep track of the countdown to Jake’s birthday and what had been the countdown to us getting out of town.
     
    My eyes lock onto today’s date and I question how it was possible I had forgotten that it was the end of the month. There’s a faint tremor in my hands as I close the front door gently behind me and start walking towards the diner, as purposefully as I can.
     
    It’s collection night and, although we went through it every month, it still made me angry—angry and afraid—partly because I knew it had been a slow few months at the diner and we already owed them more than we had in the tills. The Bleeding Angels would be at Sunny Side Up tonight and they would want their money.
     

CHAPTER EIGHT
     
    The graveyard shift at the diner was never a lot of fun. The shift usually passed about a hundred times slower than it did at any other time, as if time had been stretched. Years ago this