Free Shredded by Tracy Wolff Page B

The blame and the agony of it, so heavy that only years of practice—years of holding that shit way down deep—keeps me on my feet and moving forward.
    When we get to my car, Ash suggests hitting up one of the parties I mentioned earlier, but I just shake my head. I’d only suggested the parties because I wanted to spend more time withOphelia, and now just the thought of squeezing into one of those crowded, smoke-filled houses makes me crazy. The pressure’s so bad I can barely think, can barely breathe. The last thing I need is to be trapped in the middle of a crush of bodies.
    In the end, I drop Cam, Luc, and Ash back at their respective homes, then head to my dad’s place. My place, really, since the great tech genius himself hasn’t been back here in three and a half years. Not since my high school graduation, and even then it was just an overnight trip. A quick in-and-out to attend the ceremony and tell me he was proud of me. I might even have believed him—if he’d been able to look me in the eye when he said it.
    An old Red Hot Chili Peppers song comes on the radio, and I reach over and turn it up until the beat is so loud that I can’t think through it. Then I just coast, every part of me on automatic pilot as I make my way through the softly falling snow, with no plans other than to go home and get high.
    At least until I turn onto Red Maple, heading toward Park. Because there, all bundled up in a bright red jacket and sitting on a bus stop bench at the side of the road, is the girl I’d walked to her car nearly an hour ago.

Chapter 6
    Ophelia
    This time I don’t bother to look up when the car pulls to a stop in front of me. I’ve been sitting here for fifteen minutes waiting for my connecting bus, and this is the fourth car that’s stopped. I don’t think I look like a hooker sitting here all zipped up—and it is obviously a bus stop, after all—but given all the idiot guys who’ve stopped to offer me a ride, you’d think I was wearing a sign that read No One Refused.
    Which is so not the case.
    “Hey!” one of the morons in this newest car calls to me, but I don’t even turn my head. If I completely ignore them, maybe these idiots looking to get lucky will finally go away.
    “Ophelia!”
    This time I do turn, at the urgent tone and the sound of my name. Shit. Not a stranger then, but Z, who looks confused and more than a little pissed off.
    I wave to him, then go back to what I was doing before he pulled up. Which isn’t much, really. Just staring down the road and trying to keep my teeth from chattering.
    I hear him curse, then the sound of the Range Rover turning off and a car door slamming. Which means I’m not getting rid of him as easily as I’d hoped.
    “What are you doing here?” he demands, coming around the front of the car to crouch down in front of me. “I thought you had a car.”
    “I do.” But it’s not the blue Honda outside the clinic. No, my car is safe in the parking lot outside the employee housing provided by the lodge—in the same spot it’s been in since I arrived here twelve days ago.
    “Then why aren’t you driving it?” He looks at me like I’m insane. And maybe I am. Either way, it’s none of his business.
    Which is why I shrug. “I’m still new to Park City, don’t know my way around very well. I took the bus today because I was worried about getting lost and being late to my appointment.” Not a lie, I tell myself. Just not the whole truth, either.
    But Z doesn’t look like he’s buying it. Big surprise. After all, it takes a con artist to know one.
    “Isn’t that what GPS is for?” he asks.
    “What’s the big deal?” I demand, going on the offensive because the defensive obviously isn’t working. “Why does it matter if I didn’t want to drive today?”
    “It doesn’t matter. Except you lied to me. And now you’re sitting out here at the bus stop, alone, in the dark and the cold, waiting for a bus that doesn’t look like it’s