p r o l o g u e
It’s hard pretending you’re perfect when you’re anything but.
For as long as I could remember, my dad, his eyes cold and calculating, judged every move I made.
I could hear his gruff voice, clearly in my head, scolding me. “No, Olivia! You can’t play outside! You’ll get mud on your dress!” Or, “No, Olivia! You can’t play with those children! Their parents don’t go to church!” And one of my favorites was, “No, Olivia! You can’t go to that school dance! You might end up pregnant!”
He kept waiting for me to mess up, to make a mistake that was unforgivable. It was like he knew that I really wasn’t this perfect girl that I pretended to be.
But I refused to give him that satisfaction.
As long as I lived under his roof, I hid who I really was. I was the perfect preacher’s daughter that he always wanted me to be. I wore my dresses and attended church every Sunday. I pretended that I wasn’t slowly suffocating on the inside.
I wore a smile on my face to hide the pain I felt while I counted the days until I could leave.
I purposely picked a college that would put as much distance as possible between my father and I.
I wanted to live and spread my wings.
I wanted to be wild and spontaneous.
I wanted to make mistakes.
And that’s why I sat down and made my list on the last night I lived under my father’s oppressive roof.
That list was my way of finding myself.
I only hoped it worked.
Or had too much time gone by, and the girl I was supposed to be, was lost forever?
c h a p t e r
One
“No, no, no, no!” I beat my steering wheel with the heel of my hand. “No! You’ve got to be kidding me!” I pulled off the road, my tire bumping along.
I put my car in park and climbed out to assess the damage.
My feet crunched on the gravel scattered alongside the road.
Immediately, the oily burnt smell of my peeling tire met me.
Calling this a flat tire didn’t do it justice. This was complete and utter carnage.
I looked behind me, at the trail of tire pieces leading straight to my car, like a path of breadcrumbs.
It was starting to get dark and this wasn’t exactly the safest road.
I was also a twenty-year-old girl, ripe for the picking.
I kicked the side of my car. “I don’t have time for this!”
I stalked around the back, to the trunk, lifting it and looking for the necessary tools to change a tire.
Which was pointless because, unfortunately, I didn’t know the first thing about changing a tire. My father had made sure that I only knew how to do a woman’s work.
I slammed the trunk closed and stalked back to the driver’s side, pulling at the ends of my hair. I glared at the offending nail, that had to be four inches long, sticking out of the tire. How many nails did people drive over a day and I was the one to get a flat freakin’ tire?
Not cool.
Not at all.
I opened the door and reached for my phone to call my roommate to come pick me up.
The sky was darkening and I didn’t want to be stranded here.
I wrapped my lightweight jacket tighter around my body, as the wind gusted around me, blowing leaves off of the nearby trees. I watched the red, yellow, and orange leaves fall down and scatter over my car. One, unfortunately, got caught in my hair. I reached up and pulled it out before letting it drift to the ground.
Gravel crunched behind me. I turned quickly, to see a guy getting out of a black car that looked like something old, but classic.
I hadn’t even heard him pullover.
I backed a step away, thinking he might be a murderer, or a rapist.