Prologue

Four Years Ago

"Arden, can you sneak out?" he asked through the phone, then added, "I need you."

   I was fifteen, and I loved him. I would have agreed to anything.

   "Yeah, I'll be there soon," I answered, already climbing out of my bed.

   It was late, well past my curfew, but the thing was, I didn't care. Tossing my thick, purple comforter to the end of the bed, I flung my legs off the side. Quietly, I pulled on my sweat pants from my bottom drawer and grabbed a hoodie from my chair. I glanced in the mirror and saw that my blond hair was a mess, so I pulled it back into a pony tail with a scrunchie. He didn't care what I looked like, I knew that. He just needed me.

   I was a teenage girl with three older brothers, so I knew how to get out of my main floor bedroom window without being heard. I had to be sneaky to do the things I wanted to do.

   I got away with everything when I was little, because I was the baby and the only girl in our family. So as I grew up, it was just normal for me to be in trouble. Not real trouble, mind you, but I got away with stuff my brothers never would have.

  But that night, things changed. Well, everything changed. Because I didn't just love Carson, I needed him, too.