Fireworks (True North, #6)

by Sarina Bowen

Her mom has had five marriages. And five divorces. It’s a staggering number for a woman who’s only forty-six. Skye is never getting married. She already knows better.

she finds the source of the voice. Then she’s even more startled, because it belongs to the most beautiful boy she has ever seen.

“Welcome to the trailer park, Skye. I’m Benito Rossi.”

Vermont just got a little bit brighter.

At sixteen, she knows she’s attractive. Once in a while she finds it useful. She knows the sophomore boys will give her whatever information she needs at school tomorrow. They’ll offer her a seat because she’s nice to look at, saving her the embarrassment of eating alone.

He smiles again, and it makes her stomach dip and swoop.

I was born there. I lived there twice when I was young. The last time broke my heart.

Let’s face it, you need some serious misfortune to accidentally sketch a perfect outline of an erect penis on live TV.

she was asking me to drive to the epicenter of my heartbreak.

“There are people in Vermont that I don’t want to see.” Like any of the Rossi family. And Jimmy Gage. And every single person I went to high school with. The list is long.

I start to feel twitchy and sad. And it’s all because of a boy who doesn’t even live in Vermont anymore. Benito Rossi.

Benito had friend zoned me for almost the entire time we’d known each other. Then, for a few glorious days before I’d left Vermont for good, it looked as if my romantic dreams might finally come true. But no. At the last second, he ditched me in the most painful way possible.

I look expensive. I look devastating. Take that, Vermont.

Then go to the Gin Mill and ask the bartender to fetch Benito Rossi. “What?” I inhale sharply. “No way.” Yes, way.

P.S. Benito has only gotten hotter in the last twelve years. Enjoy the view.

When I fled Vermont at seventeen, I used to stalk him online. He wasn’t very interested in social media, so it wasn’t very fruitful. But that was back when I used to spot him in crowds. Or I thought I did. My subconscious was still looking for the boy who broke my heart.

I haven’t thought about him much since. Except in my dreams, and they don’t count.

Benito Rossi’s brother turns his head to study me. “You look familiar,” he says. “Have we met?” A beat goes by while I swallow my shock. “Nope,” I lie.

“That’s so odd. Rayanne bet me ten bucks that my next ride would go to the Gin Mill.”

You and Benny had a thing in high school.” “We didn’t,” I say icily. One kiss does not a thing make. Even if it was the world’s best kiss.

How dare Benito Rossi return to Vermont and enjoy this town that tortured me?

Skye manages to lift the helmet over her head, but she fumbles with the chin clasp. “C’mere.” Benito beckons, and then his big hands fix the strap.

The bike shoots forward, and everything is breeze and sensation. She is flying, and she is holding tight to the most beautiful boy in the world. Falling for him is as inevitable as the trees dropping golden leaves

It’s easier to be alone. She doesn’t have the money for the right clothes, and she doesn’t have the energy for the abuse she’d have to take. Unfortunately, she’s going to take more than her share of abuse, but not at school.

“Hey little slut…” Skye runs into the woods. She’s not thinking about a destination, only that she needs to leave his sight.

Benito reaches down under the chair and pulls out a can of Deep Woods Off. “Can I offer you a sample of this fine cologne?” And Skye smiles for the first time all week.

Tonight she’s meeting somebody named Raffie. Who is Raffie?

Jesus Christ. Skylar Copeland is downstairs in my brother’s bar. And she’s pissed off about something. For a split second, my heart soars. Thank you, Jesus. I’ve gone twelve years without knowing where she was, or whether she’s okay. On any given day of the last decade I would have given anything for the chance to hold her. Or, hell, just sit in the woods and talk with her.

I can’t believe I have to go down there and look into those sweet eyes—the same ones that always turned me into a goner—and play it cool

Stay loose, Rossi. This girl broke me in two, and she’ll probably do it again. But I’m going to have Gage’s head on a plate before the month is out. If my heart gets shredded again in the process, that’s just my cross to bear.

“I promise you we haven’t met.” But maybe he watches a lot of YouTube. If he asks me to draw him a penis on a cocktail napkin, I’m out of here.

I don’t even know what I want him to say. Unless he falls to his knees to beg forgiveness, there’s no way this can go smoothly.

This bar is really pretty cool. No, it isn’t, I remind myself. Vermont is a horrible place.

Six-foot-three inches of my high school heartbreak is staring intently at me.

I feel the onset of a fight-or-flight response coming on. Flight is sounding like a good option.

he looks good. When did his shoulders get so wide? His eyes are just as beautiful as they always were, so dark and brooding.

the mountain-man look suits him. This is information that I never needed, by the way. I could have gone my whole life without knowing that he grew up as hot or hotter than he was at eighteen.

Back then, my whole world orbited around this man. Even now I feel my world tilt subtly in his direction.

I get a whiff of him, and it wrecks me all over again. Leather and pine needles.

When we were friends, I looked into those big eyes a thousand times, and they never let me down. Until the night when they did.

when that beautiful man was supposed to turn up on my doorstep for the biggest night of my life, Benito hadn’t shown. I’d sat on the porch in my fancy dress and I’d waited. Like an idiot.

Back then, I would have done anything to hear more of his deep voice in my ear. But now I just need to get away before he can bring any more of that ache back to the surface.

“First I’d like to give you an overdue apology,” he says in a voice that’s way too calm. “I’m sorry I let you down on the last night of school twelve years ago. It’s all my fault, and I’ve regretted it ever since. I’m sorry.”

his apology is both unexpected and woefully inadequate. Does he know how much pain he caused? Not that I think about it anymore. Not usually.

“Skye, I went half-crazy wondering what happened to you.

It wasn’t only that I’d missed a party. He’d taken another girl instead of me.

“It wasn’t a big deal,” he repeats slowly. “Right.” Liar, liar, J. Crew skirt on fire.

This is how he used to look at me—as if he could see all the things I hid from everyone else. And back then, I was okay with that.

The sound of his laughter is so familiar that it makes my hands shake. This is why I’ve avoided Vermont for so many years. Now I’ll have the sound of Benito’s laugh—and an updated image of his devastating face—in my head when I go back to New York on Monday.

“Hey!” a man says, stopping me. “It’s you.” I blink up at him for a second. But it’s nobody from high school that I recognize. “Hi?” “Nice penis,” he says. “Top notch.”