Put your finger down if.... -You almost got hit by a car the day you found out about your father's other family. -You are saved by the nastiest boy in town and become convinced that he is now your white knight in shining armor. Naturally, you think you're in love with him. The only problem? You're twelve and he's twenty, but he's too kind to tell you otherwise. -You continue to throw yourself at him until he puts his foot down when you get older. So you move on with your life, and when your family moves away, you're glad you're gone and don't have to be the girl who chased you anymore. -Almost a decade later, you cause a riot in a strip club, break his best friend's nose and get arrested. That teenager you fell in love with is now a man, and when you sit across from him and he interrogates you, you realize he doesn't remember who you are... This one's for you, reader. Thank you for loving these characters and this series. Preface She danced to the beat of her own drum. Chapter One As we grew older, there were some things we knew we shouldn't do. Life had a set of rules and some big no-no's. Let's see... there was stealing, cheating, killing and what I was doing at the time: following a man in the dead of night. Logically, I knew I shouldn't be doing this, but logic and catching your next big break didn't always go together. He was my big white whale, and for this kind of thing, it was an all or nothing situation. So rules be damned, right? Ever since I was a little girl, I've always been very curious - not nosy, as my peers suggested. I was just curious by nature. Nancy Drew and Carmen Sandiego had nothing to do with me. If there was something that needed investigating, chances were my nose was already trying to dig up some dirt. Growing up, I had the perfect little family: my mom, my dad, my sister and me. Until one day my father left and I was left wondering why. My father's departure sent me into a spiral that, to this day, I have not been able to get out of. This was figuring out why things happened the way they did. My mother, bless her, tried to protect my sister and me. I swear she did, but I was determined to find the answer to why my father left. My sister was older, so my father's departure affected her in a different way than it did me. While his departure broke her heart into pieces, I was there trying to make everyone fit together so I could get the answers I needed. When I was twelve, I discovered the real reason my father left, and it finally broke me. I couldn't understand what made him run away with his lover and leave the life he had behind. Leave me behind. Why would a man who had everything decide to throw it all aside for someone new? Why would he leave a perfectly good family for a new one? I knew there were no stupid questions, but why did men do the things they did? Just like getting to the center of a Tootsie Lollipop, the world may never know. That day also led to my near death. I was so distraught about my world falling apart that I didn't think or see where I was going