Adrenaline: A Fall Away Series Bonus Content Collection by Penelope Douglas Page B

ponytail, then I could get out of this.   Appearance is everything , my mother would say.
    I knew it was a load of crap, but it was all the hope I had to hold onto right now.
    I blew out a long, slow breath and straightened my back. My fingers instinctively went to my mouth, but then I jerked them back down to the steering wheel again, remembering not to bite my nails.
    Nik cleared her throat, and I knew she’d been watching me. “Well, perhaps your lucky star is shining tonight,” she suggested.
    Lucky star.   I rolled my eyes.
    I reached over to turn on the AC but stopped when I realized that the cop still had my keys. Damn Arizona summers.
    “There’s no such thing. And if there is, my luck has run out,” I grumbled, darting my head around to see if the cop had emerged from his car yet.
    “Don’t count your chickens until the fat lady sings,” she said matter-of-factly.
    “Before they hatch,” I corrected. “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.”
    “Whatever. Show me your tits.”
    “Nik!” I laughed, clamping my hand over my mouth. It would not be a good idea for the cop to see me giggling.
    Nik pointed at me and smiled. “Got you to lighten up, didn’t I?” She winked at me. “Don’t worry. You will get through this, because the gods are always on your side, K.C.”
    I pursed my lips, trying to hide my smile from the tit comment.   Yeah, right.   Nik had it in her head that I had the best luck in the world and that she only stayed my roommate so she could benefit from the residual effects.
    She was high. On what drug, I didn’t know, but she was out of her mind.
    Yeah, it was a little weird freshman year when the answers to a Macro-economics test I was unprepared for showed up in my email inbox.
    And it was kind of awesome two weeks later when the sprinklers went off in Finite Math on the same day I happened to be running late for a quiz.
    And then last spring when I had to write a report on Oliver Cromwell’s England? The University librarian emailed to let me know that the research texts I’d requested were waiting in reserve for pick-up. That wasn’t weird or awesome. It was unnerving. I’d never requested any texts for research. I had no idea where to begin with that research, actually.
    Lots of lucky little things happened like that over the last two years, and I couldn’t explain it.
    My mother cut off my credit card when I decided to minor in Creative Writing, and a job at the University bookstore landed in my lap.
    I’d failed to study for a Music Appreciation final, because I couldn’t stand the class. My teacher’s test playlist of Baroque composers was replaced with 2 Live Crew’s   Me So Horny.
    A speeding ticket I couldn’t pay mysteriously disappeared from the DMV database, and one of my professors who had creeped me out with a suggestive email ‘resigned’ after his other emails to other students were leaked. The one to me wasn’t, thank God.
    Most of it was great. I never took the test answers…wherever they came from, but I certainly wasn’t going to complain about the rest of it.
    I just simply wasn’t going to rely on it, either.
    Between that and Nik, I’d had more than a few reasons to smile these past two years, and now I could be thankful that I was no longer the girlfriend of a cheater.
    I was grateful for that.
    But I was also nervous. The summer was starting, and I was supposed to be moving into an apartment with Liam next week. I was supposed to be planning my study abroad trip to New Zealand for next spring. And I was supposed to be home in bed right now.
    Instead, I was in a shitload of trouble on all fronts. I now had no place to live this summer, my college classes were as dry as dirt, and—I twisted my head around again to see that the cop was still working in his car—I was possibly in deep shit with the law now.
    I winced, swallowing the lump in my throat.   My mother.   What the hell was she going to say?
    Checking the rearview