Page 11 of Into the Woods

“I’m glad she’s gone,” Corinne decided. “I’m gonna go help with lunch. Bye, Bex!” She bounced away.

Maddie’s eyes turned to me. “Bex—”

I cleared my throat. “Hey, you know what? I’ve gotta go.”

“Shit,” she swore. “Bex, I’m sorry.”

“Why?” I forced a brittle laugh. “Court’s an adult, and he can do whatever he wants, right? We both can. You know what, Mads? I think you’re right. Maybe it’s time I go out on a date. Try some of that awesome sex you’ve been telling me about.”

“That’s not…” She trailed off, chewing her bottom lip.

“Talk later, yeah?” I smiled again, feeling like my face was going to crack.

“Bex—”

“Bye, Maddie.” I hung up and tossed the phone aside. It lit up a second later with a text from Maddie, probably apologizing again for something that wasn’t her fault.

No, it was his fault. And, yeah, maybe mine, too, because I wouldn’t let myself move on. I was still that little girl with a crush on the boy she could never have. The boy who’d pushed her away and then turned into the man who’d broken her heart.

“Time to grow up, Bex,” I told myself, swallowing back the wave of tears that pricked the backs of my eyes.

Court Woods might have been the first boy I’d ever loved, but he wouldn’t be the last. It was time to move on, the same way he had.

CHAPTER 4

BEX

If I was going to move on with my life, I needed a wingman.

Wingwoman.

Maddie, being on the other side of the globe, was a no-go, so I called in the next best thing: my cousin Camille.

My mom’s older sister, Celeste, had two daughters. Jayme was the oldest, and she was currently traveling the world with my favorite band, By the Edge, as their tour director. She was awesome, edgy, and fun, but it was her younger sister, Cami, that I counted as one of my best friends.

Camille was two years older than me. After her parents’ divorce when she was three, she’d split her time between Paris and England, leaving her fluent in two languages. With her pale golden hair and big hazel eyes, she had this ethereal sort of grace that I’d always envied. I lived for her stories of scandals and drama at the ballet academy where she’d trained for years.

After a falling out with my childhood best friend had left me feeling alone and sad, Cami was the one who’d started calling me Bex. She’d simply declared that I needed a change.

I had been two weeks into a summer-long moping session when Camille burst through the door and convinced me I was better off without Madelaine, the coolest girl in my school, who had been my best friend for almost three years.

I’d trusted Madelaine, and now I knew the real reasons that she’d dropped me like yesterday’s trash, but at thirteen, losing her friendship had been the end of my world. And it was made worse when she went from being my best friend to being the school’s worst bully, leading the charge against me.

Thirteen sucked enough without adding best-friend betrayals on top of it.

After that, Cami became my best friend. She’d spent the rest of the summer with me, even though she’d had a boyfriend who had ultimately broken up with her because she’d prioritized me over him. It still made my heart all sorts of fuzzy, knowing that my super-sophisticated cousin had picked me over a guy who was literally a model.

I’d gone back to California at the end of summer with a new hairstyle that Cami had found in a magazine, a new wardrobe, and a new name. That was the summer Bex was born and Rebecca was put away. Cami was the one who’d convinced my family to start calling me by the new name and had even gone so far as to send gifts and flowers to me at school under it. And because she’d wanted to make sure the world knew me as Bex, she’d had them delivered to me during classes from random names, going as far as to enlist her private school friends to help write the messages so the handwriting varied.

I finally made her stop after a teacher threatened to give me detention if my delivery schedule interrupted his class again.

Did it change the fact that I’d still been an object of ridicule and mockery? Or that Madelaine was a heinous bitch who’d devoted her life to torturing me? No. But it had allowed me to reclaim a piece of myself that had been stolen, and that had helped me survive the past five years.

I’d mostly kept to myself at school, but Maddie’s arrival had changed that. With her, I had an actual best friend and ally. And, of course, with her came her fiancé… and his friends.

It was weird; I’d grown up with Ryan, Ash, Linc, and Court, but I hadn’t really seen them since I was nine. We’d all changed. Some for the better, and some for the worse.

My mistake was in thinking we could move beyond our past. They had proven to me, yet again, that I was disposable.