Chapter 1

On graduation day, Dale Stephens kissed me and swore that so we wouldn't end up apart, he would go to Southbay University with me, no matter what.

But when the acceptances came, he'd gone to Kingsford University, and I'd been placed at Rutherford University.

He said it was a system glitch. My Southbay application hadn't saved, and all that was left was my safety school.

He said he was even more heartbroken about it than I was.

During orientation training, I rode ten hours in a cheap coach seat to Easton to see him.

Only to find him on the field, grabbing transfer student Antonia Winfield's weighted pack off her back and running her punishment laps in her place.

Under the shade of the trees, one of his buddies teased with a grin, "You changed Sadie Quinn's applications behind her back just to stay near Antonia? You're not scared she'll find out?"

Dale bit the cap off a bottle of ice water, his smile loose and careless.

"So I changed them. Big deal."

"With her scores she'd have been dead last at Southbay anyway. What's wrong with being top of the heap at a second-tier school?"

"You really not scared she'll bolt?"

"Her?"

He let out a scornful little laugh.

"She loves me so much she'd throw away her own dignity."

"Even if she found out, one crook of my finger and she'd come crawling right back."

In that moment, cold spread through my whole body.

I didn't confront him. I just dropped the fever medicine I'd bought for him into the trash.

Dale Stephens, since this is the choice you made.

Then for the rest of this life, we're never seeing each other again.

……

1

The second the medicine box hit the trash, Dale called after me.

"Sadie?"

He caught up in a few strides and closed his hand around my wrist.

His palm was burning hot.

"When did you get here?"

"Why didn't you call?"

He'd just finished running Antonia's punishment laps, his hair soaked through with sweat, but his lips were pale from the fever.

When he saw the suitcase at my feet, he froze for a beat, then his eyes crinkled up.

"You really rode ten hours in a coach seat to get here?"

"You missed me that much?"

He leaned down and ruffled my hair, easy and familiar, the way he had every time he'd coaxed me before.

Ten minutes ago, I'd still been worried about his fever.

Now all I wanted was to pull away from him.

"Just got in."

"Just got in and already giving me attitude?"

Dale pinched my cheek.

"Who upset our Sadie?"

He played it so naturally.

As if the person under those trees who'd laughed at me for having no dignity wasn't him.

Antonia limped over.

"Dale, the infirmary's closed."

Dale let go of me at once and crouched to check her ankle.

"Didn't I tell you to sit still and not move?"

"I was afraid I'd hold you up from being with Sadie."

Antonia gave me an apologetic little smile.

"She's been on the road so long, she must be exhausted."

"It's fine, she doesn't fuss over things like that."

Dale answered for me.

He pulled off his jacket and tied it around Antonia's waist, then pushed the suitcase back into my hand.

"You go to the hotel first. I'll take her for the X-ray."

"Where's the hotel?"

His movements stalled.

I'd asked three times before I left, and every time he'd said it was all taken care of.

Antonia said softly, "Why don't we just give my mom's room back to Sadie."

"My mom can squeeze into the dorm with me."

So it wasn't that he'd forgotten to book one.

It was that my room had been handed over to Antonia's mother.

Dale frowned.

"Your aunt's back is bad, how can she squeeze into a dorm?"

He pinched my fingertips, his voice going soft.

"Sadie, just rough it for one night."

"Tomorrow I'll switch you to one with a bathtub, okay?"

Antonia lowered her head.

"It's all my fault. I won't go to the hospital."

"Shut it."

Dale crouched down in front of her.

"Get on."

Antonia climbed onto his back, her arms wrapping around his neck.

A few steps in, Dale opened his phone one-handed and booked an ER slot through a nearby hospital's page.

The screen quickly popped up a reminder for an eighteen-hundred-dollar deposit.

He looked back at me.

"The ER wants eighteen hundred up front."

"That family plan card you set up for me still has room on it, right?"

"You take her punishment, carry her to the hospital, and now you want to spend my money too?"

"If you're jealous, just say so."

His smile was brazen.

"Once we're married, doesn't every dollar I make end up in your hands anyway?"

"Just cover it for now."

The next second, the charge alert popped up.

Eighteen hundred dollars.

Dale waved his phone at me.

"You say you won't give, but you never shut the card off."

"You don't mean what you say."

He carried Antonia off.

I shut down the family plan card and unlinked every payment device.

What I'd heard on the field wasn't enough.

I wanted proof that they'd changed my applications.

After finding a motel nearby, I took the old manual out of the lining of my suitcase.

It was the rainfall observation records my mother had left behind.

Six years ago, she'd pushed me up onto a rescue boat in a flash flood, and never made it back herself.

I'd originally set up an appointment with an archive studio in Easton, planning to use this trip to get the manual scanned without damaging it.

At one in the morning, someone knocked on the door.

I'd shut off the family plan card, but I'd forgotten I was still sharing my live location in the chat app.

Dale stood outside, his gaze sweeping over the moldy corner of the wall, his face going dark.

"Who said you could stay in a place like this?"