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everything associated with it go. Too bad she wasn’t as sure she could do that as she’d been a few days ago.

Chapter 6
    Thursday morning, Jemma decided to break in her newest pair of running shoes some more. She tried to be careful with her money most of the time, especially since she was used to not having much of it—she could almost hear Lynette’s voice snapping in her ear and demanding her paycheck—but new running gear was her weakness. Especially shoes. She often broke down and bought new ones whenever she ran across a pair she liked even if she hadn’t run out of mileage on her current ones.
    Later that day, she would meet Emily Rose at the party store in Fredericksburg to pick up some last-minute things for the reception. But she didn’t have to be there until noon. So early that morning she decided to go for a run and then make Mary breakfast. She wanted it to be ready when Mary got home from her shift at the Gas and Go. Since there were no running trails nearby, she’d run a few miles down the road from Mary’s house and turned back.
    Jemma stared at the endless expanse of trees on either side of the road. She concentrated on the sound of her even breathing and the soles of her shoes hitting the gravel that covered the road’s shoulder. Those simple rhythms always comforted her, and she needed to be soothed at the moment.
    Unfortunately, thoughts of Davis crept up on her yet again. He’d been her entire world, and then he’d made her universe black. She’d given him the power to do that, that was her fault, but she’d never give it to him again. That didn’t change the fact that she could still feel his pulse under her fingertips from when she’d grabbed his wrist in the parking lot. She glanced down at her fingers. She half expected them to be glowing red where they’d touched his skin.
    The time they’d been almost friends in high school had started up because of Davis’s idiot clique. They’d pulled a particularly horrible prank on her one day at lunch. It ended with gravy on the seat of Jemma’s jeans. Out of the group, Davis had always been nicest to her. After school that day, Davis had come to the gas station during her shift to apologize for what his friends had done. They’d talked more than they ever had before. Everybody knew about Lynette, and eventually the conversation had made its way there. He knew enough even if he didn’t know the whole story. He’d told her that they had more in common than she thought.
    Soon after that, he started visiting the store at least once a week. Then, he gave her rides home from work some nights. She made him stop at the gate to the apartment complex so Lynette wouldn’t know. Lynette was usually passed out by the time she got home, but she could never be too careful when it came to that woman. Jemma wasn’t in the business of poking angry bears with sharpened sticks.
    Over the weeks they spent together, he told her about his alcoholic dad and how his mother had left town when he was four. Soon after, the rides home started including detours to the parking lot of an abandoned building on the edge of town. And then talking turned into kissing. Before she knew it, she was in love, although she knew such a thing could only end badly. And it had. With him dating Tara.
    Right when Smooth wrecked everything, Davis told her they could never be together. And she was supposed to forget that later when he allegedly changed his mind and said he loved her? She’d been a fool, but not a big enough one to buy that story. He’d probably done it out of pity for her after her mom and brother died. Not that it mattered anymore. Whatever she and Davis had done, whatever quasi-friendship they’d shared, that was the past. She’d moved on to South Carolina where she’d had school and work and an okay sort of life.
    She was supposed to be renewed. Successful. She needed to start acting like it again. It was as if she’d forgotten how as soon as she’d