He was still as tall and skinny as ever. Benny greeted Ash with a huge smile, but when he saw Felicia, he’d grinned even wider and pulled her into a hug. “I’ll be damned,” he said when he let her go. “This is a huge surprise. I didn’t know you two were back together.” It was a morning for surprises, she wanted to tell him. When she’d called her parents, she’d prayed for the answering machine. Instead her mother had answered, sleepily since it was an hour earlier in New Mexico than it was in Louisiana. From the tone of her mother’s voice, Felicia was pretty sure she hadn’t known about her spending time with Ash—yet. The call had been brief, because Felicia had decided that was just how it was going to be. She’d also voted to tell her mother the truth. She wasn’t a sixteen-year-old sneaking out of the house anymore. “I’m going to be a week late,” she said quickly. “What do you mean?
