Page 34 of Wicked Destiny

Today, my ragamuffin crew decides we’re going to a music festival, Rock en Seine.

It’s a huge five-day thing on an old royal estate at the edge of the city, in a park called Saint-Cloud. My outfit consists of cutoff denim shorts so short they’re basically a formality, a cropped white tank I knot at the ribs, scuffed boots, and a swipe of gold on my eyelids.

As I study myself in the mirror, for the first time in forever, I look like a woman with a future instead of a girl in mourning. I’m hot and free as a bird.

Waiting for the others, I scroll the lineup and everything in me goes cold.

Limelight.

I should have known. Beau’s band is playing between a French rapper and an Australian pop star.

Of course he’s here. He’s on his festival tour. It feels like ages ago I sat in his kitchen wishing he’d ask me to come out on the road with him. It’d be ironic if I flew to the far side of the planet to escape him and ended up in the crowd he’s playing to.

Fuck.

I make myself breathe and check the dates. The relief is so total, I nearly sink to the ground. Limelight played the opening night. Two days ago. He’s long gone. Probably three countries away by now performing on the next stage.

It occurs to me, running into Beau never crossed my mind. Not once. Obviously, we don’t travel in the same circles. I’m cattle class and he flies private. This was a close enough call.

With the crisis averted, I don’t let myself think about it another minute because I’m gonna have fun tonight if it’s the last thing I do.

We stake out a spot on a hill. Callum finds a guy with a cooler. Dev buys me a crepe the size of my head. The sun goes down and in another ironic moment, a guy named Lake Lyon from Seattle turns out to be the best live act of my life. I dance in a Paris field with people who make me laugh and the knot I’ve dragged around in my chest for a month loosens.

Finally.

After the set, Beatriz and I cut back through the crowd to grab beers. On our way back, with a plastic cup sweating in each hand, the whole world drops out from under me.

I feel him before I see him.

Beau is five feet away trying to be inconspicuous with a ball cap pulled low and sunglasses that wouldn’t fool a child. I’m close enough to hear his low, gravelly voice and every particle of the free, hot, healing girl I was ninety seconds ago evaporates.

My body forgets how to work. Beatriz is long gone and my feet are rooted to the grass, beer going warm in my fists, while the crowd shoves past me on both sides.

Because he isn’t alone.

His arm is around a woman. She’s small and delicate, around his age. Beautiful in the effortless way of someone who’s been stunning their whole lives. Strawberry-blonde hair loose around a face I feel like I’ve seen somewhere, maybe in a magazine.

She’s turned into him, laughing at whatever he’s saying. His hand is spread easily at the base of her spine and they fold toward each other with the unthinking closeness of people who have known each other a long time.

It guts me somewhere I didn’t know I had nerve endings.

I should run. Turn. Melt into the crowd and be gone before this gets worse.

Unfortunately, my legs don’t work.

It gets worse.

Beau glances up, the idle scan of a man looking for a friend in a crowd. His blue eyes skate right over me the way they would over any stranger.

They snap back.

I watch the instant he registers the girl he flew across the world to leave is standing fifteen feet away in cutoffs and gold eyeshadow with a beer in each hand and her heart in her throat.

His whole body goes still.

A double take.

Absolute recognition.