Dangerous Rock (Dangerous Noise 3)

Then so am I.

We fall back into an easy silence. The wind rustles the brush. Her breath is heavy. Mine too. Our footsteps are soft. Easy. We go like that for minutes.

Bella stops under the shade, on top of a dusty rock. She holds her hands over her eyes to shield them from the sun. "If I lived here, I guess I'd have prescription sunglasses."

"You don't?"

"I do. But I didn't think I'd need them in Vegas." She leans against the rock. Her eyes meet mine, but she doesn't say anything.

"It's bright in the desert."

She nods.

"But you weren't planning on seeing much of outside."

Again, she nods.

"You said you flew there to blow off steam."

"Yeah."

"Why?"

She's quiet for a long moment. When she speaks, her voice is soft. "I'm in law school. I finished my first semester a week and a half ago. Then I got my grades." Her gaze goes to her feet. "Mostly Cs. I'd never got a C before and all of a sudden I had three."

"Never?"

"I got two Bs in college and both were… I was not happy."

"The smart sister doesn't get Bs?"

She nods. "Yeah. My entire life, I had this plan. I was going to be a lawyer. Like my parents. And I did it all right—excellent high school transcripts, great grades at Harvard, admission into Columbia Law School, internships at the right places, summer jobs doing research." Her voice drops. "Then… then I got to school and it was too hard. I tried. All I did, all semester, was study and go to the gym."

"Yeah?"

She nods. "But I got Cs."

"Can you graduate with straight Cs?"

"In theory." She stares at the inside of her wrists. The left. Then the right. "But probably not in reality."

I move closer.

Closer.

She looks up at me. Her voice is shaky. Vulnerable. "I failed. I didn't know what to do. Only that I didn't want to think for a while. That I had to be somewhere else… with someone else."

"So you flew to Vegas?"

She nods. "It would have been easier to go to Atlantic City. Or to go to some club downtown. But that was too—"

"Too close to home."

"Yeah." She bites her lip. "I still don't know what to do. What I'm going to do with my entire life. If I can go bac

k to law school. If I want to." She swallows hard. "I've never failed before."

"Everyone fails sometimes."