Page 79

Stardust.

That extra thing.

She’d only ever had survival. She had never had extra. The ability to just feel something good. To indulge in it simply because it was there and she wanted it... That had never been available to her.

Now she wondered if this was the sort of crossroads normal people stood at all the time. And if like her, they were a little bit afraid that it was a path to ruin.

Because at some point, her father had stood there with temptation in front of him. A life stretching out before him that had been unbearable to him in some way. Whether it was because of poverty or a lack of control, and he had decided to step over a line. He had decided to discard the rules of the system because they didn’t serve him, and create a system of his own. To gain power. To gain more money. What was that if not self-indulgence?

She had been caught in the middle of it, unable to make a choice. For her, it had never been self-indulgence, but survival.

In this, she had a feeling, was in some ways her own version of that.

Except it wasn’t breaking the law.

So what did you do when things were great like this, and you were trying to see the end result—that all-important tip for being a highly effective person, which she was doing well at when it came to business—but you couldn’t see where all this might go?

What did you do then?

She could see why Daughtry liked certainty. Why he took comfort in being a police officer.

Suddenly, she felt a kick of something in her breast. A burning, bright conviction.

She wasn’t Daughtry. She wasn’t her dad.

She was Bix, and she always had been.

She had carried herself this far. And no, it hadn’t been without help. But maybe she had to stop giving every achievement away.

The Kings were wonderful. Daughtry in particular had given her something spectacular. But she hadn’t wasted it.

Suddenly she felt... filled with energy. Filled with joy. Because when standing at a crossroads, when being given the chance to do better, she had taken it. And whatever her feelings for Daughtry meant, the real crossroads had been back there when she’d had to make the decision to stay or go. To actually work, rather than continue to hustle in the margins of the law.

She had made good choices. Choices that had brought her here.

Because that was the real gift. The real gift of being in a place that was beyond survival, was being in a place with choices.

And when presented with choices, she had made some pretty good ones.

“Good job, Bix,” she whispered to herself as she looked around the room. “Good job.”

When Bix hadn’t come home, he felt compelled to go looking for her. Not for the first time, he wondered if he should get her a cell phone so she would be easy to track down. But he had a feeling she would lecture him on tracking devices, and the dangers of hooking herself up to satellites.

Because that was Bix. And he enjoyed that about her as much as he found it annoying. He heard her voice before he opened the door to the outbuilding where they did the brewing, and he had expected to see her there with someone. In fact, he expected to see her there with Michael, and he knew a moment of extreme irritation.

But he wasn’t there.

It was her. Standing in the dark, illuminated only by shafts of moonlight that came through gaps in the wooden planks.

“Bix?”

She whirled around. He expected her to say something threatening. Tell him that she could’ve taken his eyeball out before she realized it was him. But she didn’t. Instead, she smiled.

“Daughtry.”

“I got worried when you didn’t come home.”

“Worried? I haven’t had a home for any number of years. It’s funny that you should be worried I didn’t come in right on time.”