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It could have
been such a nightmare.”
    “The whole time he lived here, everyone
whispered all these stories about how he killed someone or beat the
shit out of someone and spent years in jail, but no one had any idea
what kind of crazy shit he’d been through,” I say. “I
still can’t believe it, to be honest. It sounds like something
out of a movie.”
    Knox’s father, a very rich and influential
man in Chicago had called the police one night and gotten Knox
arrested for beating his step-mother. Knox went to juvenile detention
for two years for that, but it turned out he was never the one who
hit her. It had been his dad all along. Apparently, his step-mom
eventually got fed up with it and shot the asshole one day when he
got home from work.
    That woman’s my fucking hero. I wish I had
the balls to go shoot the guy who raped my friend.
    “Why do you think the press left it alone?”
I ask her.
    She shrugs. “Knox thinks it’s because
so many of us came forward,” she says. “If it had been
just me, the media might have crucified me, saying I had a history of
making bad choices, but with so many victims coming forward, I think
it became pretty obvious that Burke really is a rapist asshole.
Suddenly the coverage switched to our side and they started pulling
all of his skeletons out of the closet.”
    I snort. “Thank God for the fickle whims of
the American Media.”
    She laughs. “You’re telling me,”
she says. “Anyway, most of the other victims have given their
affidavits have been taken and a new set of charges have been filed.
Now we’re just waiting for a court date. The attorney thinks it
could be as soon as December.”
    “That’s not too bad,” I say.
“Did you decide for sure what you’re doing about school
starting back?”
    She’d been trying to decide between going
back to school in Boston or enrolling here at Fairhope Coastal.
    “Knox said he’ll come with me if I
decide to move back to Boston,” she says. “But I haven’t
really decided what I want to do. Up there, the trial will be my
life, you know? Plus, Burke still lives there, even if he’s not
allowed to go to classes. The last thing I want is to be running into
him every day.”
    “I still cannot believe six women from the
school accused him of rape and it took the administration this long
to suspend him. What kind of bullshit is that?”
    “I know, it’s disgusting,” she
says. “They kept saying he hadn’t been convicted of
anything.”
    “Yet.”
    She smiles. “Yet. Anyway, this conversation
is a downer,” she says. “Let’s talk about your date
with Braxton tonight. What shoes are you going to wear?”
    I look at her and smile, wanting to tell her just
how impressed and how proud I am of her. How much I wish I could be
like her. Instead, I just wrap her up in a huge hug and pull her
toward the closet to help me pick out shoes.

Chapter Eight
    Braxton pulls up to the gate at exactly seven on
the dot.
    He’s driving a black Escalade with tinted
windows, so I can’t get a good look at him through the security
cameras.
    Mom is pretending not to be interested, but she’s
walked by me about six times in the last ten minutes. When she walks
by this time, I turn toward her and smooth my hands down the front of
my dress.
    “How do I look?” I’m wondering
if she’ll even recognize this dress.
    She stops and raises a hand to her mouth, studying
me. “You look gorgeous as always, sweetheart,” she says.
“You really need a bracelet or a watch or something, though.
Your wrists look so bare.”
    She unhooks the clasp on the ten carat diamond
tennis bracelet she’s wearing.
    My mouth drops open. She’s never let me wear
her jewelry before. “I can’t,” I say. “What
if I lose it or something?”
    “Don’t,” she says, a smile
growing on her face as she secures it around my wrist.
    I twist my arm, watching the diamonds sparkle in
the light. It’s breathtaking, but it’s heavy and it
scares the shit