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that cheek for feathery kisses and pointed attentions. All wit and sarcasm and guarded inhibitions fled—in Ben’s embrace I wasn’t an heir to the Archer family empire, as so many others saw me, or a wounded warrior bent on vengeance, as Ben hadclaimed with such certainty. I also wasn’t a woman fighting for normalcy—fighting, but losing—which in fact was how I saw myself. I was just a woman. So often that was all a woman wanted to be.
    “I didn’t think you’d ever want to see me again,” he murmured. His heart cracked through that voice.
    Startled, I stared up at this man, so unflinching and honest and whole , and saw—for the briefest moment—the boy who hadn’t had the strength or experience to be any of those things.
    “I didn’t either,” I admitted.
    “But you’ll go on a date with me?”
    I nodded.
    “Tomorrow night?” he asked urgently, as if to make up for lost time.
    I nodded again.
    “So, what’s changed?”
    I shrugged. “Now I have seen you.”
    And that was it. Life sometimes flips on you like that. One minute you’re looking at your reflection in the water, not entirely sure you like what you see, and the next minute you’re upside down, submerged in a world where even familiar things look new. I put a hand to Ben’s cheek just as he’d done to mine and softly said good-bye. It was a fragile and new beginning between us, and like a new parent cradling life, we were both being gentle with it.
    But I smiled as I left Valhalla. Of all the qualities Ben had attributed to me earlier, he’d forgotten flexibility. I’d grown up as well, and had learned to adapt to the situation and to the moment because I’d had to. That’s how I could rebound from being attacked to being kissed in the same night. If I hadn’t possessed the ability to roll with the punches, I might as well have died facedown on the scorching desert floor.
    Exactly as I’d been left to do over a decade ago.
    But here, on the eve of my twenty-fifth birthday, I decidedI was ready to look at my world anew. Perhaps Ben was right, I thought, his kiss still fresh upon my lips. Survival was all well and good, as was the elusive search for normalcy. But maybe neither was enough anymore.

3
    It was midnight as I made my way home, exactly twenty-four hours before my next birthday, and the nightly bacchanal that was Las Vegas was in full swing, a strange cross-culture of midwestern hedonism and foreign bafflement. The Strip was a neon necklace strung from one end of the valley to the other, like gaudy costume jewelry dressing up the desert night, and despite the sharp November air, every street, walkway, and aerial tram was packed with tourists. Their gazes were wide-eyed and expectant, like they expected someone to drop money in their lap at any given moment.
    I bundled into my wrap, then my car, and gassed it past Bellagio and Caesar’s before hurtling over the wash that flooded the Imperial Palace’s parking garage every monsoon season. Lowering my window halfway, I allowed the cool air to bite at my cheeks and ruffle my hair. Even if my mind hadn’t been buzzing with thoughts of Ben, or images of Ajax writhing on the floor—and then, again, more thoughts of Ben—I’d have been wide-awake. Vegas came alive at night, and so did I.
    I’d often thought how boring it’d be to grow up in aplace where everyone was the same…until I realized that everyone really was, essentially, the same. They watched the same television shows, ate at McDonald’s, had their coffee at Starbucks, and hopped the same airplanes to return to whatever state or country they thought made them different. While they were here, however, no matter what color, shape, or accent they sported, they wanted identical things. To be entertained. To get lucky. And to be allowed to dream, just for a while, that anything was possible. Despite its checkered past and dubious press, Vegas spoke to people of hope. And hope, as they say, makes fools of us all.
    I