Tourmaline’s face burned. And then burned more. A sick feeling rose in her throat. The only person she’d thought of as a true ally. A friend.

Complete and utter bullshit.

She rubbed her eyes, wanting to scream.

A screech owl trilled in the dark above them, heralding the sudden gust of a honeyed breeze.

“Where did you go today?” Cash asked in nearly a whisper.

“What?” she snapped, suddenly remembering he was there.

“We were talking and then you and Jason were up in the woods for a while, and . . . ,” he trailed off. “Then you weren’t there.”

She faced him, stomach still churning. “You just don’t get it,” she said quietly. “I called you by your first name today, by accident, and Jason was up my ass like, Oh, why are you saying that? Do you have something going on? Now he knows we’ve been talking. That I have your number. And that I lied to him. Now the one thing I didn’t want to happen is going to happen.”

“It’s not like we’re hooking up.”

She ground her teeth. “That’s not going to work as a defense.”

“No. We’re . . . I mean. We’re just talking.”

She groaned and tucked her hair behind her ears, lifting her face into the warm breeze that carried the watchful owl’s ballyhoo. “Either I’m your president’s daughter—and that girl can’t be talking to you. She can’t want you. Or I’m Aubrey Winthrop—and that is a girl I was always told never to be. You don’t get to be both—I can’t be respected as a daughter and be sleeping”—fuck, she’d said that out loud; she winced—“with a member.”

He looked confused. “What am I doing? Who’s Aubrey Winthrop?”

Tourmaline shrugged, frowning. Her footing was unsteady and she was only ankle deep. How on earth did she imagine she could go further? And Virginia. Stupid Virginia. She tightened her fists, still smarting from the betrayal. If she couldn’t judge her own friends, how on earth did she expect to make her way in her father’s world? How could she trust Cash?

“Do I have to pick?” he asked.

“Yes, you have to pick,” she snapped. “You’re the one who decided there are only two options.”

He pulled back and laughed. “Me?”

“You.”

“And how in the hell did I do that?” He sounded more annoyed than he’d ever been with her.

“Because you’re a Warden.” She crossed her arms. “Because I’m someone’s daughter, someone’s party girl, or someone’s ol’ lady. That’s the system.”

“Uh, no.”

“Because I don’t get to exist in this world apart from you.”

“You existed long before I got here.”

“But Cash.” Her shoulders slumped. “I exist to you. But not anyone else. I’m a . . .” With her hands she shaped the air into nothing, grasping after words. “A thing. A piece of paper with a girl drawn on it that is arranged in the background to look the way it’s decided I should look. Even if I don’t think of myself that way, I’m afraid it will be that way for the rest of my life.”

Cash’s mouth settled in a tight line. Muffled fireworks popped in the distance. He looked annoyed. Frustrated with her. It twisted her gut and made her want to fall on his shoulder and take it all back. But she didn’t move. She didn’t say anything else that might cut away at what she had already said. “You can’t have me and the Wardens. And the Wardens are your dream. We have to back off, and I’ll fix it with Jason. He won’t listen to you about it, but he’ll listen to me.”

Cash slid an opened hand onto her neck, thumb brushing over her earlobe. “You don’t know all I dream of,” he said softly.

She didn’t breathe. A fierce longing watered in her mouth. She tilted her head just a bit, toward the rough, warm skin of his palm. A sudden urge to find some part of him to taste.

But Cash moved on, slipping her hair back over her shoulder and letting his hand fall to his side. “Remember we were talking about how I went to school in North Carolina?” His voice was low and charged in a way that just encouraged that sweet ache building through her stomach. Stuffing his hands into his pockets, he turned to look over the ridge. “One time, when my dad was nearing the end, I drove the Blue Ridge Parkway back from school. My dad had always talked about it, and we’d moved when I was eight, so my memories of here are pretty vague. It took damn near forever to get from North Carolina to Front Royal—but there was something about it. I never got tired of looking down into those hollows and cirques.” He laughed softly, tilting his chin to the moon. “That near-endless stretch of blue hills.”

Tourmaline’s throat ached to listen to the depth in his voice. The obvious love.

“People hear ‘Blue Ridge Mountains’ and they think of, like, fucking John Denver and toothless hillbillies. If you’re a paper girl, I’m invisible. Nonexistent. No one hears ‘Appalachians’ and thinks of me.” He tapped his chest, hand shadowed even under the moon. “But it is mine. It was my family working the iron ore furnaces. My father’s father in the mines. My history in the unmarked graves along the back roads of North Mountain. This is where I was born. These are my mountains, no matter what anyone thinks. This is where my parents carved out their own story, together, in a time that isn’t that far gone and still doesn’t like people to step outside whatever box has been assigned to them.” His gaze flickered to her, dropping to look at her mouth.

For one heart-stopping moment she was sure Cash was finally going to kiss her.

But he swallowed and looked back to her eyes. “I passed these exits on the interstate for years without stopping, but on that trip on the parkway, I promised myself I’d take the exit. I was sitting at a diner eating a ham and cheese. I see a guy pull up on this nearly reflective Seventy-Two, and while I’m sitting there, knowing what the future probably holds and already mourning my dad, and feeling that ham and cheese just wedged into my throat, the man gets off and I see his cut.” A smile split his face. “Wardens. It was my dad. It was fate. It was who I was and where I belonged, and I’d only needed to take the exit to find it.”

Now she really couldn’t do this with him. The stakes were too great for two people who were committed to other things. She bit her lips tight and stared at him, taking a step back in agony.

“My story isn’t what people think of as the usual story. But then, the people who define who I’m supposed to be are the same people who define what you’re supposed to be. I knew what it was to be a black conscript, even in a mixed club. It’s fucking southern Virginia, T. My history is here and it’s slavery and no one is going to get around that. But I get to own what happens next. I get to make the decisions about who has a say and what story gets told. I knew your dad had a daughter, I was warned well and plenty before I even met you. Honestly, I didn’t think anything of it. But you . . .” He ducked his head, laughing as if embarrassed. “You had this giant plate of food. And this sharp look in your eye. And you walked in like you owned the place.”

“Well, I do,” she snapped. But then she remembered that her dad owned it and it’d been a Wardens party—a moment when he wouldn’t have ever expected to see her. It was the space in her life she’d owned—owned simply by showing up and not backing down.

Cash just kept going. “Your hair fell into the gravy. And, I don’t know why, but that was all it took. And getting to know you has been like. Like learning to ride here. These roads are curves that always threaten to wind around you, instead of you winding around them. I’ve been riding since I was old enough to drive, but suddenly I’m turning a bend and positive I’m going to eat concrete. You make me feel like that. And all of that is to say—whatever happens—the only people who matter between me and you are me and you. And I don’t care if that’s not how it’s been done before, that’s how it’s going to go between me and you.”

He said it as if he expected it to be good. As if it meant they had come to terms. Resolved the things they owed service to.

Tourmaline couldn’t do anything but stand there and feel her heart breaking over something she had never had but desperately wanted. Because this was what would happen: She would stay a respectable daughter in order to keep her family, and he’d pin starlings to his vest to gain a brotherhood.

The wind pulled her hair back across her face, dragging it out in long white trails under the moonlight. Something inside her chest firmed up. Straightened. Felt calm. “You belong here. It looks good on you. I have . . . so much respect for you. The Wardens are lucky.” Tourmaline smiled and nodded toward his vest. “Come on, take me home.”

Cash nodded. What looked like disappointment flickered across his face, but it might have been a passing shadow of the trees or an owl in the moonlight. He handed her the helmet and turned away, sliding one leg over the bike and pulling it upright.

The wind caught her hair and tossed it back over her face. And there, in the moonlight, her mother was there, pushing her on. In the whispering mountain air and the dip of the treetops, bending toward Cash.

The motor started in a flooding growl and Cash straddled the bike, waiting for her to climb on behind him. He was a shadow in the darkness, the bike darker than coal.

She lifted her chin into the wind and yanked the helmet strap tight. The paper girl did not need to define her life anymore. She could be the whole person she’d been that night at McDonald’s, unafraid and free. It would not be safe. It would not feel sure. But she could do it, if she wanted. Stepping on the foot peg, she planted her hands on his strong, muscled shoulders and swung onto the seat behind him.

He stayed perfectly still, head dipped forward, as she settled behind him without moving. She kept her hands on his shoulders, her stomach scooped in. Every bone in her body wanted to pull close, wrap her arms around his waist, and hold on. But she kept her distance. She hadn’t yet decided. Hadn’t yet gathered all the required courage. She might lose both the future and the past that way, instead of one or the other.

“I’m good,” she called.

Cash lifted his head and put the bike in gear, twisting between her knees as he looked behind them, making sure the road was still empty. Slowly, he pulled out and sped up.

The wild mountain air streamed faster, barreling through her hair and over her limbs. Full of seduction and persuasion. She pressed down on his shoulders, tempted by the wind to abandon her body for the stars, wrap her legs tight around Cash’s hard torso, and pull them both down low into the earth and loam. But she just swallowed and tried to mirror the sway in his body as the road wound around the ridge.

She took a deep breath of the wind, dripping with evening primrose and honeysuckle in full bloom. They roared out of the trees, into the open—with the valley bright under a quicksilver moon and the wind howling over the exposed crags and gnarled pines. As Cash leaned into a curve and she followed the roll of his body, she caught a glimpse of the road over his shoulder—winding into the dark as a sinuous silver ribbon. It was beautiful and wild and enthralling. It choked her. Took away her breath. Brought her blood surging and boiling as if it had heard the call of the wind and the open road and needed to be released. And suddenly she remembered.

You’re a mountain road. Straightaways, sure, but also curves that come back in on themselves and always threaten to wind around you, instead of you winding around them.

Cash straightened back out, opening the throttle wide.

Carefully, Tourmaline eased herself forward—opening her legs wider and pulling herself snug against his back.

He took one hand off the handlebars and squeezed just behind her knee, encouraging, pulling her tighter.

She slid her hands down his back, wrapping around to rest, palms open on his flat stomach, and held on.

Just in time for the descending curves.

He put his hand back on the handlebars. The wind whistled in her ears and throttled her hair behind them. As Cash leaned, so did she. And the moon tracked them through the trees, throwing their shadows on the road.