CARMEN
I didn’t want it to end.
That thought hit me somewhere between my second glass of iced tea and Bella handing me a plate piled high with food like she thought that I hadn’t eaten in days. Maybe I hadn’t—not like this, anyway. Not without watching every movement, not without wondering who was judging, who was waiting for me to slip.
Here, no one was.
I had braced myself for it. The cold shoulders. The quiet whispers. The mean-girl personality finally revealed itself once my guard was starting to lower. The looks that were measured and dismissed in the same breath.
But none of it happened.
Instead, I was welcomed. Like—actually welcomed.
Rio had been the first to really pull me in, her energy impossible to resist. She talked with her hands, with her whole body, like everything
