Chapter 2

The first three days felt less like heartbreak than withdrawal.

Every morning, I reached for my phone expecting Ethan’s good-morning text. At the convenience store, I nearly grabbed his usual black coffee. When a ridiculous video made me laugh, my thumb hovered over the share button before I remembered there was no longer an us to send it to.

I had blocked him on every account and moved into a temporary room in my high school’s dormitory while I prepared to leave Pierton. Ethan never came looking for me. He thought I would cool off, unblock him, and apologize for making trouble.

On the fourth morning, I forced myself out of bed. I had already accepted Wesmuth University’s early-admission offer; now I needed to finish enrollment paperwork, housing forms, and freshman orientation requirements before the fall term.

I was leaving the dorm to use the city library when I walked straight into someone.

“Still not watching where you’re going?”

Ethan smiled down at me. He wore the black shirt I had bought him and carried a paper bag from the potato-roll shop downtown, the one with a two-hour line on weekends.

“Are you still mad?” He touched the warm bag to my cheek as if nothing had changed. “I didn’t stay at the hotel. Vanessa’s roommate picked her up. I got in line at five this morning for these. Forgive me, Mrs. Caldwell?”

That teasing name used to undo me. He knew it.

I stepped away. “We broke up.”

His smile slipped, then returned. “Come on, Chloe. I admit I didn’t think it through. I hurt your feelings. But Vanessa’s our classmate. I was trying to keep the situation from getting worse.”

He pulled a thick envelope from his bag and offered it to me.

Inside was an itinerary for a graduation trip to Sundale, along with two first-class tickets for the following Wednesday. Diving near Centora Island. Sunset at Coconut Bay. Dinner at the cliffside restaurant I had once shown him on my phone.

It was the trip I had planned aloud for years while he nodded without looking up from his work.

“I was busy with competitions, and I neglected you,” he said. “This time I’ll turn off my phone. No calls, no favors, no interruptions. Just us. We’ll celebrate graduation and Wesmuth properly.”

I hated that I wavered. But eighteen years didn’t disappear because I had finally said two words outside a bar.

I looked at the itinerary, then at him. “Can you actually do that? One trip where you don’t leave me waiting because Vanessa needs something?”

“I promise.” He raised one hand. “I won’t break my word.”

I took the envelope, but not the food.

“Then I’ll see you at the airport next Wednesday.”

His relief came too quickly. He thought he had already won me back.

I knew better. I had not forgiven him. I had given him one clear choice.