The music and laughter and light of the celebration faded quickly behind me as I ran, the sidewalk slipping away under my feet. It wasn’t until I reached the RV that I remembered: I didn’t have the keys to get in. Who did have them? Blake?
Fine, then. I slumped onto the steps to wait for the others. Leaning on another locked door.
I slipped my phone out of my pocket. I needed to let Jaz know where I was before she tore the festival apart looking for me. I wanted to call her. Wanted to cry. Wanted her to tell me something gentle and reassuring, the way she always did. But this was her brother, for goodness’ sakes. Why had I ever gotten involved with my friend’s brother? What had I been thinking?
I hadn’t been, that was all. I’d let myself get caught up in the emotion. Or the lunar phase. Or something. For the first time in my life, I’d acted without carefully calculating the consequences, without balancing within the confines of my self-imposed rules.
And see where it had gotten me.
I kept my text to Jaz brief. Not feeling good. Went back to the RV to wait for you guys.
My head was still spinning, my emotions still running laps around my stomach. I hunched over my knees, trying to make some kind of sense out of the situation. Trying to force myself to think about it logically. Trying to ignore the fact that I could still feel Kason’s lips on mine, that every time I replayed the moment, I felt annoyingly warm and tingly on the one hand and completely disoriented on the other.
What had happened? What on earth had happened? Kason was my friend. Just my friend. Not the type of guy who could fascinate me.
But the pull I felt toward Kason went beyond mere fascination. It was something deeper. Something rarer.
The moon was high above me, a lopsided disc edging toward fullness. I traced the crescent hennaed on the back of my hand. Kason was—he was—steady. That’s what he was. Like the moon. Quietly shining in the darkness, pulling irresistibly with a tidal tug.
A tug I hadn’t meant to feel.
Gran would have had a holy fit.
My phone buzzed. Jaz.
Is everything all right?
Her text twisted more knots inside my soul. So she didn’t know yet. And once Kason told her—
Oh, why had I done this? Why had I destroyed everything? I’d lost both Kason and Jaz. Neither of them would ever speak to me again. And what about the rest of the trip? Things would be so weird in the RV, and—
What was Kason thinking right now? He had to assume I didn’t like him. And I didn’t. I mean, I did, but not like that. Did I? No. I liked him, but I didn’t like him, and he might think he liked me, but his liking me was probably because he thought that I liked him. But if I didn’t like him, why did I like thinking about liking him? Did I like thinking about liking him?
I know that’s confusing to hear. Trust me, it was even more confusing to feel.
But those are the kinds of tangles my thoughts pulled all around the situation. Even the moon looked weary by the time I finally heard voices floating closer, footsteps crunching on the gravel. And then I could make out Jaz’s words.
“—yeah, and so that’s why Auntie LaRita never stayed at our house again after the whole toad incident. I mean, I understand it’s got to be unnerving to find one in your bed, but still, it’s not like I expected it to escape, and I did try to find it before—” Jaz broke off as she stepped into the glow of the streetlight beside our site. “Jen, there you are. You okay?”
“Yeah.” I slid aside to let Blake unlock the door. I was, in fact, possibly the farthest from okay that I’d ever been.
“You sure?” Jaz tossed a worried glance at me as she headed into the RV. “Maybe it’s from driving at altitude yesterday. Sometimes makes people feel bad at first.”
“Maybe.” But I knew the truth. I wasn’t feeling sick from how high I’d climbed but from how far I’d fallen.
Kason shuffled up quietly behind the others. I looked desperately at him, but he didn’t make eye contact with me. Just watched the moon.
The knots pulled tighter.
I followed Jaz into the RV.
The drive the next day was—all but unbearable. Jaz cast me a cautious look when I sat next to her in the morning. “Jen?”
“Yes?” I’d been awake all night. Watching my worries chase their tails.
“If you—” She squeezed my shoulder. “I’m here, okay? Nothing else—” she circled her hand in a nervous gesture—“changes that.”
So she knew. Of course she knew. My face throbbed with heat. I couldn’t raise my eyes to meet hers. “Thanks.”
But Jaz’s reassurance couldn’t ease the prickly tension in the coach. Kason sat on the couch instead of in his usual seat, burying himself in the New Complete Guide and ignoring me with impressive success. Even Jaz, despite her earlier promise, seemed different. More distant, maybe. Although that could have just been my expectations overriding reality. I kept my imagination working overtime, analyzing every look and word from the others. How many of them had seen me kissing Kason? What were they saying behind my back?
Awkwardness itched like the scratchy wool sweaters Gran insisted I wear to church in the winter. And it clung to me uncomfortably for the whole miserable drive. From Moab to Battle Mountain, Nevada, that day, and then from Battle Mountain west the next day. By ten o’clock Saturday morning, when we pulled into Reno, I’d figured out two things:
1. I wished Kason had never kissed me.
2. I wanted him to kiss me again.
Both of these are ridiculous, and neither make any sense.
I hated it all. Hated the way the air felt uncertain and thick. Hated the wariness Jaz was trying to hide. Hated the fact that Kason’s expression was a closed door. Just when I’d finally had a chance, I’d tangled the lines of light beyond repair. Destroyed all the fragile faith I’d found.
I should have never left Mount Victory.
As soon as Blake pulled into our site in Reno, I tumbled out the RV door. This park was a noisy one, like the one in St. Louis, with a collection of truck stops and fast food joints across the road and the interstate close enough to touch. It wouldn’t be dark enough tonight for Kason to see the stars.
Kason.
I kept walking, the gravel crunching under my feet. A building with 1950s-looking vinyl siding was just around the corner, with a neon sign that was supposed to say OFFICE, but the second F was burned out, so it said OF ICE instead. For a second, I smiled, knowing how it would make Jaz laugh.
Then I remembered.
I dropped my smile and stepped up to the window, cupping my hands to block the glare. The place looked to be a typical camp store. Souvenirs and toilet paper and canned food and matches and all the stuff like that.
I kept going, past a vacant shuffleboard court and a swimming pool already crowded with campers. Just beyond the cinder-block restrooms was a square building that said REC ROOM. A blast of A/C shoved against me when I opened the door and stepped inside. Threadbare indoor-outdoor carpeting cowered under the harsh buzz of fluorescent lights. A row of unused-looking treadmills marched down one wall. In the corner, a table was spread with a partially completed puzzle, pieces scattered around the edges. A voice was talking.
“—and the righteousness of God is revealed in these end times by—”
A flatscreen TV was playing some evangelist program. Yet another thing I couldn’t seem to escape. The woman watching the TV from the sagging couch sort of reminded me of a more tired-looking version of Gran.
I circled to the puzzle table. Only about a third of the picture was completed. Something with horses in front of a rusty barn. More to ignore my own tumbling thoughts than anything else, I sifted through the pile of pieces. The barn doors were the only part of the picture with white. They should be easy to spot.
The preacher’s voice wasn’t bad, actually. Resonantly confident, but not the hellfire hollering of Gran’s favorites. I studied the gap in the barn silo, then hunted for the missing piece, letting the rhythm of the preacher’s voice settle my own breathing.
“—for by grace we are saved through faith. And that is not of ourselves; it is the gift of God, the holy God, the powerful God, the just God—”
The distant God. The confusing God. The unknowable God.
I tried a piece. The shape was wrong.
“Amen.” The woman on the couch murmured the word reverently, her hands cupped as if she were receiving a tangible blessing through the screen.
I glanced at the TV again. Where was this church, anyway? I’d considered myself familiar with all these programs, but I’d never seen Gran watch this one.
A banner unrolled across the bottom of the screen. HARVEST HILL INTERNATIONAL.
Harvest Hill? This was the infamous Harvest Hill? The place where all those marketing envelopes came from. The place that—according to Gran—was a hotbed of heresy.
The camera panned out to show the massive audience. People stacked in rows. Like the five thousand waiting to be fed.
“Let me tell you a story about the timing of God.” The preacher’s voice washed over the crowd, breaking words, loaves and fishes, into something miraculous. “When I was a boy—”
I leaned closer, caught in curiosity. So far, the preacher hadn’t said anything blasphemous, as far as I could tell. No reason why Gran would hate the place so—
“—in Albuquerque.”
My attention snapped back to the preacher’s words.
“My parents were church planters in the city, and we—”
My heart thudded into some painful urgency. I leaned over the unfinished puzzle just as the camera shifted to a close-up of the man’s face. Hazel eyes with a familiar shape. Red hair threaded with gray. The same smile that I saw in the mirror.
It was a jolt. Like stepping in the dark into an unknown hole. Or maybe like the missing puzzle piece clicking into place and completing the picture. But it was that jolt that told me the truth. Even before, in the next instant, the text on the screen changed.
PASTOR THAD J. HARMON.
#
I don’t remember what I said when the woman on the couch asked if I was okay. Don’t remember where I dropped the puzzle piece I’d been holding. Don’t remember, even, how I got out of the rec room.
All I remember is suddenly being at the RV, as if my feet had led me back to the last place I’d known for sure. And then Jaz was grabbing my arms. “Jenna! Are you okay?”
“I—I—” It wasn’t until then that I realized I was shaking, something deep in my core shuddering like an earthquake in my soul. Sweat was trickling down my back, but my teeth were chattering. “I h-have to—c-call my grandmother.”
“Wait, what happened?” The near panic on Jaz’s face told me how bad I must look. “Talk to me.”
Words, like everything else, had crumbled. I shook my head. “I—I’ve got to call Gran.”
“You look ready to pass out, Jen.” Jaz pointed to the picnic table. “Sit down for a minute. Okay?” She glanced around. “Kason’s in the office. I’m going to go get him. Wait here for us. Don’t go anywhere.”
She sprinted off, and I sagged onto the picnic bench. The shaking was working its way through me, as if my insides were being wrung out. I’d seen my father. My father.
And the realization was sinking in, coming quiet after the loud bang of the shock—my grandmother had to have known.
Urgency snarled inside my chest. I yanked my phone from my pocket and punched Gran’s number.
One ring.
Two rings.
Three rings.
Come on, Gran.
And then she answered, her voice across the line as cool and precise as ever. “Jenna?”
“Gran.” I was panting, my heart thumping hard and hurtful in my chest. “Gran—”
“Jenna?” A hint of worry colored her tone. “Are you all right?”
“I’m—” I tried to swallow my panting. If I sounded too emotional, as Gran would put it, she wouldn’t take me seriously. “I need to ask you something.”
“What’s going on? Where are you?”
“Reno.”
“Reno? That gambling town? What on earth are you doing in—”
“Gran, we’re just here for today, and we’re not gambling.” I hadn’t talked to her on the phone for over a week, and thirty seconds into our first phone call, she was already putting me on the defensive.
“Watch your tone, young lady.”
The conversation was devolving fast enough that I had nothing left to lose. I closed my eyes and blurted the words. “Is my father the pastor at Harvest Hill?”
The question was a rock thrown into a murky pond.
And in the ripples of silence, I had my answer.
“Jenna—” Gran’s voice fluttered around my name. “Jenna, you need to—”
“Is he, Gran?” My words were loud, rough, caught raw on the edge of every question I’d asked, every ache of not-knowing. I half-expected her to reprimand me again, but instead she sighed.
“Yes. He is.”
Some burning pain was rushing like poison through my veins. All this time. All the answers I’d come across a continent for, and Gran had been holding them like a sickening secret all along.
“Gran, you always told me that you didn’t know who—”
“I told you that your mother never told me who your father was, which is true. I found out—later.” Her defense was quick. “I didn’t lie.”
Oh, right. The letter of the law, her specialty.
The poison was pounding, some noose of rage and pain choking me. “You were lying!” I flung the accusation like a gauntlet. “Every time I asked you who he was, every time I told you that I wanted to—”
“Jenna!” Her tone was sharp with something besides anger. Something that sounded almost like—fear? “Listen to me. I’ll tell you the story, but I need you to listen.”
Oh, so she’d tell me now. Eighteen years too late. I wanted to scream or cry or throw up, but instead I gritted my teeth until my jaw ached and forced myself to listen.
“Your father—” She sounded unsure, as if trying to remember where she’d left the loose ends of the story. “All right. Your mother would never tell me who your father was. But I had my suspicions. I mean—she and Thad were very—close. And the timing of his move—it all worked out. After she—after she passed away, Thad tracked me down. I suppose one of her friends had told him about her passing, and that was the first he was aware that he had a daughter.”
So my father knew about me? Had known since I was nine years old? “What happened?” My throat was almost too dry to form the words.
“Well.” Somehow her voice was still matter-of-fact. As if she’d long ago detached from this story. “He asked me about the possibility of meeting you.”
“And?”
“I told him I didn’t think it was a good idea.”
The noose locked tight. “You what?”
“You were in a very unsettled position, Jenna. Your mother had just died, for heaven’s sakes, and you were—I’m sure you don’t remember much, but you were traumatized. After the—lifestyle—your mother had lived, you were worried about everything.” An ache crept into her voice. “You cried all night. You wouldn’t play or run or smile or—or any of the normal things kids do. And you couldn’t stand to have me out of your sight.”
A door in my mind cracked open, but I turned away from the memories stashed inside. “So you thought I didn’t need a dad?”
“I thought you didn’t need another change in your life right then. Another upheaval.” Her voice hardened. “Certainly not involving him.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I was breaking all the rules, talking to my grandmother like this, but she wasn’t scolding me.
“Eva would have never gone down the road she chose if not for him. He was always a wild one. Moving too fast.”
Too fast. Jaz’s description of Blake. I forced the comparison down and refocused on my grandmother’s words. “Gran, Mom made her own decisions. I don’t think it’s fair to—”
“You weren’t there, Jenna.” Her voice was rising now too. “Everything changed—her whole attitude—once she met him. She was never the same. She lost all interest in everything but him, and no matter how much I tried to talk to her—”
Talk to her. The way Gran had talked to me? With lectures and rules and ever-shrinking cages of acceptable behavior? “She was in love, Gran. That doesn’t mean—” I realized I was gripping the meteorite. “It wasn’t his fault.”
“He was as wild as they came. I didn’t like him. Never liked him. He led your mother into—” Her voice was hard. “I didn’t want him to get the chance to ruin you too.”
“Gran—” Anger was throbbing, hot and relentless in my face. “He’s a pastor, for crying out loud!”
“He’s a pastor at a nondenominational church. Goodness knows they let anyone run those shows!”
Could she not hear how ridiculous she sounded? She’d kept my father from me over imaginary grudges and doctrinal differences? “So—you never talked to him again?”
“No. He insisted on sending an amount of money every month. I’ll admit, he did do that much, at least.”
The monthly envelopes from Harvest Hill. The ones I’d assumed were newsletters. Had anything in my life ever been what I’d thought it was? “And you thought I’d never find out? You thought it was better to let me go my whole life wondering and hoping and looking and—”
“I was hoping you’d ultimately drop the matter.”
Drop the matter. As if this were a casual business discussion instead of the intersection of my past and future. Rage was roaring, and I couldn’t breathe, let alone speak, but Gran kept talking.
“But yes. Now you know.” Her tone sliced acidic. “For what it’s worth to know that man is your father. If you have any other questions, I’ll try to answer them.”
“The way you’ve answered my questions for nine years?”
“Jenna—don’t be unreasonable.” She took on that maddeningly patronizing tone. “You need to try to calm down.”
Calm down? Calm down! When she’d just blasted the foundations of my whole world? “Gran, I can’t believe this! When were you going to tell me?” My eyes stung with helpless tears. “I’ve spent eighteen years without my dad. Eighteen years! And you’ve known for nine of them who he was and where he was, and you lied to me!”
“Why don’t you ever give me any credit, Jenna?” Gran’s voice was louder than mine. I’d never heard her this agitated. “I’ve tried to do what was right, give you the best life I could, and it’s never enough. Don’t you see that everything I’ve done has been to protect you?”
“Protect me? How is it protecting me to—”
“Jenna, stop. Stop!” Her voice was shaking. “We can talk more about this when you get home.”
Home. “I’m not coming home.” The words sprang out before I had time to consider them.
“What?”
“You heard me.” I clenched my teeth. “I’m not coming back home. I don’t want to ever see you again!”
“Jenna!” That strange fear was in her words again. “Jenna, will you please understand that—”
“Yeah, I understand. I understand that you lied to me and kept my father from me and wouldn’t tell me anything that happened.” I was yelling now, the words wrenching raw from my soul. “You’ve made me walk this—this balance beam of being good all my life, and the whole time you were lying to me!”
“Jenna, listen!” Gran’s words overpowered mine. “I made the right decision about your father. Do you know how I know?” She didn’t wait for me to respond before she kept going. “I told him not to come see you. And you know what he said? ‘Okay.’ Just like that. And he never asked to again. And that right there told me everything I needed to know.”
Something clenched, for just a moment, inside my gut.
The next moment, I shook it off. Why was I listening to her when she’d spent years lying to me? “It doesn’t matter, Gran. He’s my dad.”
“Jenna, please—”
Please? Oh, now she was going to beg? “I’m going to find him, Gran. I’m going to find him, and I’m never coming home!”
I swiped off the call and smacked my phone onto the picnic table just as Jaz ran up, Kason behind her. “Jenna, what’s going on?”
The words we’d said were still spinning around me. I reached for my phone again and googled harvest hill international. Driving directions came up. One hour and twelve minutes. That was it? That was the distance between me and my dad?
“Jenna?” Worry had tightened Jaz’s expression.
I stood and faced her. Every joint in my body hurt. My hands had stopped shaking, but they were numbingly cold.
“My father is the pastor at a church an hour from here.” Saying it still felt surreal. “And my grandmother has known who he was for nine years.”
#
I didn’t wait for Jaz and Kason to respond before I rushed into the RV. The anger was still there, but it was being overshadowed now by a pounding purpose. There was only one way to fix this. Only one way to try to get back what had been lost, what I could have had a decade ago if not for Gran’s deceit.
The door opened behind me. “Jenna?”
Oh no. I turned reluctantly. “Yes?”
There was a distance in Kason’s expression, a reserve that showed he was holding himself back. “What—what happened? Are you okay?”
Even after I’d hurt him, he was still worried about me. Guilt needled at me. He deserved to know. “I walked up to the rec room when we got here. There was a preacher on TV, and—it was my dad. And then I called Gran, and she’s known ever since Mom died. So all this time I asked about him, she was lying, and she even told him not to come see me.”
“Jenna.” Kason’s face held the weight of the story. “Did she say why?”
“She didn’t want to confuse me.” A sarcastic laugh jerked loose. “Because letting me wonder about my dad all my life definitely didn’t do that.”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He shook his head, but still, he didn’t come closer.
“Thank you.”
Awkwardness hung between us. I hated the caution in his compassion. Hated that the lines of light between us were knotted. Hated that every hopeful thing from this trip had so quickly crumbled into nothing.
Hated that even now, I was remembering how it felt to be in his arms.
My cheeks flushed warm, and I looked down. “The church is a little over an hour from here.”
“Really? That close?”
“Yeah.” My frustration surged all over again. I’d been that close to answers all my life. I slung my backpack over my shoulder and headed toward the back of the RV to grab my other bag. Not much to pack. In less than five minutes, all my tracks on this trip could be covered.
“Wait.” Kason was following me. “What are you doing?”
“Getting my stuff.”
“Why?”
I stopped in the narrow hallway and turned to face him. “I’m leaving.”
“Leaving?” His eyes flashed with alarm. “Where are you going?”
Wasn’t that obvious? “To see my dad.” I pulled up the Lyft app on my phone and put in a ride request.
“What makes you think he even wants to see you?”
I think, now, that it was that moment that made me snap. The way Kason put his finger squarely on my deepest fear. But I don’t want to make excuses for myself. And I still wish I could undo everything that happened next.
I planted my hands on my hips. “Of course he wants to see me! Why would he not? He’s my dad, Kason.”
“Yeah, but—” He hesitated. “Does he—you said he knew about you, right?”
“Right.”
“So—” He seemed reluctant to drag the words out. “So—if he knew about you and didn’t try to contact you before now, maybe—”
“No.” I pushed against his logic. “He’s going to want to see me.”
“Okay.” He didn’t look convinced. “So—what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to go to the church and find him.”
“And after that?”
“I don’t know, Kason!” Irritation prickled over me. “Why does that matter?”
“Because—” He swallowed. “When will you be back to finish the trip? Will you meet us somewhere, or—”
“I’m not finishing the trip.”
“What?” His eyes widened. “Jenna, no. The eclipse.”
The eclipse. I’d been so focused on finding my dad, but still, how had I forgotten about that? I hesitated. “What day is it again?”
“Monday. Day after tomorrow.” Kason shook his head, taking a step closer. “Jenna, listen. Come on with us to Big Sur for the eclipse, and then you can come back here to find your dad.”
The options ripped me in half. But I’d ached for my father for eighteen years. I couldn’t go another day walking away from this chance. “I—I can’t.” I clenched my jaw. “I hate that I’ll miss the eclipse. I really do. But—”
“But you can’t miss it!” Kason shook his head, urgency building behind his words. “It’s the answers, remember? All the biggest answers—”
“I already have my answer.”
“No.” He shook his head, his eyes snapping with fervor. “It’s bigger answers than that, Jenna. Bigger than you can imagine.”
“Kason, I thought you would understand!” Couldn’t he see he was only making this harder for me? “This is my father. Do you know how long—”
“Yeah, but you promised. You promised you would see the eclipse!”
Oh, so now he was going to stir guilt into the cauldron of emotions already brewing in my chest. Perfect. “I promised before I knew about my dad!” The words snapped out less graciously than I’d intended. “Don’t you realize? This is why I even came on this trip in the first place. To find my father. That was the whole point for me.”
“But I thought—” He stopped. Sighed. When he spoke again, his voice was quieter. “I thought it had become more than that for you.”
I hated the way the choices were tearing me apart. “I did too, until—” No. I wasn’t going there.
“So you’re just going to give up.” He crossed his arms. “You’re walking away from the lines of light, Jenna.”
“I don’t agree with that.” Resentment sizzled inside me. I’d had the most horrible day, and he was making it way worse. “I don’t have time for this right now.”
“So that’s it?” I couldn’t tell if he was more angry or hurt. “You’re just going to walk out?”
I picked up my bag. “Kason. Please.”
His eyes searched my face one more time. Whatever he was looking for, he must not have found, because he slowly backed out of the hallway, letting me through in a silent surrender.
I walked out of the RV and headed out front to wait for my Uber. Where were the others? Even Jaz had seemingly disappeared.
The RV door opened behind me. I should have known he wouldn’t give up that easily.
“You’re not going to find what you’re looking for there, you know.” He walked up beside me, squinting into the sun.
“What does that mean?”
“You say you want to belong, but you don’t. Not really.”
I sucked in a breath and spun to face him. “What?”
“You’ll never find belonging until you change the way you approach people.” His voice was low but filled with a conviction I couldn’t argue with. “Look at what happened Thursday night.”
Thursday night. So we were going there? My whole body heated. “Kason—”
“Belonging takes bravery, Jenna. You’ve got to be brave enough to belong.”
“And you don’t think I am?”
“No.” He took a step toward me, his words burning with conviction. “You push people away because you won’t get close. You won’t let the lights connect. Belonging isn’t something you find; it’s something you do. And you’re too scared of it.”
Seriously? That’s what he thought? That I wasn’t brave enough?
A red tide of anger rushed back in, and I let myself get caught in the undertow. “Well, what about you?”
“What about me?”
“You’re not brave enough either, I’d say. You expect me to open up to you, but you won’t tell me anything.” I hated the hurt I saw in his eyes, but the tide was rushing and me with it. “There’s some reason you’re on this trip. Some reason you won’t talk about.”
His chin jutted. “I came on this trip to see the eclipse.”
“That’s not the only reason.”
“All right, fine!” He flung his hands in the air, his expression tense. “Yeah, there was another reason. And it’s no one’s business except mine.”
“Then maybe you should stop judging my choices too.”
“I’m not—” He shook his head, groaned. And then he met my eyes again, some of the fight draining from his expression. “Look, Jenna. Forget about me. But please—please don’t do this. Follow the light. I promise you, it’s worth it. This isn’t—it’s not right.”
I was tired. Too tired from the emotions of the last few days and the fight with Gran and the tension between us and the way I couldn’t stop remembering Thursday night. Shouldn’t getting my answers have made things better, not worse? Why had the truth tangled everything so badly? And most of all, why did I feel as if I’d lost the rhythm of the dance, as if every move I made now was somehow wrong?
I backed away. From the conflict, from the confusion, from all of it. “No, Kason.”
A car pulled up. My Uber.
“Jenna—”
I walked toward the car. The one that would carry me into the answers I’d found.
“Jenna, wait.” His hands were on my shoulders. He turned me to face him.
For a brief moment, I wavered under his touch. Considered telling him how confused I was, how lost I felt. Considered saying any one of the sentences floating through my mind.
I’m sorry.
I need you.
I’m lost.
I couldn’t talk myself out of this chance. I stepped back. “Tell Jaz I said bye.”
I didn’t look back until I was in the car, and when I did, I wished I hadn’t. Because Kason was still standing there, still watching, his shadow stretching long before him like the darkness of a starless sky.