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wrapping an arm over his chest and twining her legs with his. The pool area was nearly empty.
    “You can’t see the stars here,” she mused, resting her cheek against his to look up at the sky. “Too many lights. It’s weird.”
    They’d both grown up under the bright, too-clear desert night sky, where civilization—or what passed for it in Grace—faded away just after nightfall. The city haze was disconcerting, like the sky was closing in on them—or like the stars had disappeared altogether. “Get used to it,” he warned her. “Next year …”
    “Yeah, next year.” She fell silent, and in that silence, he saw it all: graduation, summer, and then the day she packed up her stuff and moved to L.A., to college, leaving him to his deadbeat, dead-end life. “About that …,” she murmured. “I’m not going.”
    Reed didn’t say anything.
    “I’m not—it’s not what I want anymore,” she said softly, and he could feel her arm tighten around him. She was still searching for the stars. “Maybe if I’d gotten into Berkeley, things would be … maybe if a lot of things had happened, or hadn’t happened, or—” She stopped, and shivered against him. He began rubbing his hand up and down her arm. “It’s not me anymore,” she finally said. “It’s not what I want.”
    “So next year, you’re just going to …?”
    “Stay in Grace. Stay with—” She turned away from the sky, toward him, and rested her hand gently against his cheek. “I know we don’t really talk about—I mean, we’ve never, about next year, but I thought you might … be … happy.”
    Happy that she’d given up the only dream she’d ever had, to get the hell out of Grace and move on to something better? Happy that, ever since they’d gotten together, she’d never talked about what she wanted or where she was going, had just lain around on the couch with him listening to his music and smoking his pot? Happy that, unlike him, she had a real future, and she was giving it up?
    “Yeah,” he said, tipping his head forward and kissing her, still overwhelmed by the taste and feel of her lips, as much as he had been the first time. “I guess I am.”

    They stuffed themselves on prime rib, shrimp cocktail, fresh fruit in a honey-lime yogurt sauce, jalepeño poppers, garlic-roasted pork loin, fried chicken wings, meat loaf, mashed potatoes, several hearty helpings of chocolate cheesecake and, since none of the half-asleep Midnight Magic staffers seemed to doubt their flimsy IDs, several pitchers of beer.
    Merry was an understatement.
    “Thish is awesome,” Miranda slurred as they stumbled up the Strip back to their hotel. All her ridiculous fears about secrets and lies had long since been forgotten. “I love Vegas.”
    “Viva Las Vegas!” Harper shouted, flinging her arms in the air. “We love you!”
    No one even bothered to stare.
    “Shhhh!” Miranda spit out the warning, along with a frothy spray of saliva, and gave Harper a light push—or not so light, as it nearly knocked both of them to the ground.
    “Steady,” Kane cautioned, pulling her back up. Miranda wanted to say something filled with sparkling wit and sex appeal, but the world was spinning and all she could think to say was, “Woo-hoo! Vegas!”
    And then she saw it. Saw him. Twenty feet tall, looming over their heads. Jared Max, lead singer of the Crash Burners, her absolute, all-time favorite band. Jared Max was a rock god—hotter than Adam Levine. Hotter than Justin T. Hotter, even, than Kane.
    Miranda sank to her knees in the middle of the sidewalk. “Harper,” she gasped. “Harper. Look.” She pointed, tipping her head away from the billboard as if it blazed like the face of God.

    Crash Burners—LIVE
One Night Only

    And a bright yellow band slung across the image, blotting out the drummer’s head. S OLD O UT !
    “Harper,” she moaned. “They’re heeeeere. And we’re missing it.”
    Harper joined Miranda on the ground as the guys gaped at