Every Night Forever Read Online Free

left when she was eighteen, following an alpha wolf somewhere out west.  She hadn’t asked Alyssa to join her, and that had cut at her.  Alyssa and her mother were never really all that close, but they were family and that should have counted for something.  Alyssa never heard from her.  Her older sister Marie called once a year to wax poetic about her life.  She was married with kids, to her high school sweetheart who was also second-ranked in their pack.
     
    She’d left a message for Marie last night that she was moving.  Alyssa was glad not to talk to her, because she was certain that Marie would’ve just told her she was being stupid.  That it was foolish to leave her hometown and pack, go rogue, and try to start a life somewhere by herself.  It was risky and frightening, but not stupid.
     
    A second-hand store took most of her club clothes and gave her a little bit of cash.  She only kept one sexy top, one pair of leather pants, and one mini-dress.  Just because she wasn’t going to be trampy didn’t mean she couldn’t dress cute.  Not that she planned to have a social life at all — ever since she went home with Ben in July, she’d decidedly turned off that part of her brain.  No man — no matter how cute — would sway her from the path to her new life.  Alyssa Morgan was celibate and loving it!  Well, loving it might be a stretch, but she was happier than she’d been in a while, and it had only been a few months.
     
    Several hours later, Jen snapped off the hairdryer and turned her around in the chair.  Alyssa stared at her reflection in shock.  The color was almost exactly what she remembered her hair looking like before she started bleaching.  It was perfect.
     
    Jen fluffed her hair.  It was now up to her shoulders, straight and boring.  “Well, you lost a good eight inches of hair, but it’s pretty healthy, considering.  A year and you won’t know it happened at all.”
     
    Alyssa thanked Jen as she paid her, feeling lighter, freer than she had in a long time.  Back at her apartment, she dressed for her job interview in an outfit she’d picked up at a boutique store in the mall; a grape-colored skirt and matching short-sleeved sweater.  She left her hair down and added some light makeup.  After one last pass through the apartment to make sure she hadn’t left anything behind, she dropped off the keys with the apartment manager and got in her Camaro.
     
    In the trunk she had two small boxes, her grandmother’s quilt, and one suitcase.  In the tiny backseat she had two more suitcases and a pillowcase stuffed with clothes.  The front seat contained her purse, a box of bathroom things, and the directions to Stone’s Gym.
     
    It was nearly dinnertime, but she didn’t want to get anything to eat until after her interview.  Mason had said she could come by anytime after six, but she wanted to be punctual.
     
    When she peeked at herself in the sideview mirror before going into the gym, she thought, “Now there’s a girl who’s got her head on straight.”  The image made her happy.  She looked sweet.  Like the person inside, who’d never had a chance to come out.  Like a bad, muzzled dog in the corner that no one wanted to play with, Alyssa kept her true personality buried underneath all the fakeness, because she wanted to be popular.  Some things you get over after high school, but she never did.
     
    She’d always been fascinated by music when she was younger, but by the time she reached high school, it was clear that ‘band was for nerds’, and ‘nerds’ didn’t get dates.  Her sophomore year of high school, when she was an awkward, gawky fifteen-year-old, she wanted to do whatever she could to fit in, and that was the first time — but not the last — that she didn’t do something she enjoyed because she was afraid of how others would view it.  She didn’t join the debate team or participate in student government, because all the kids she admired