Chapter 3

Summer's POV

I blinked. Turned. Spotted my phone on the desk behind me. Screen open, the lock screen bypassed.

It clicked.

Evan.

I remembered: on Evan's birthday last year, I'd shown up with eighteen gifts, one for every year I hadn't been in his life, and held up my phone like a trophy.

"Evan, these eighteen gifts are for all the birthdays I missed before I met you. I changed my lock screen password to your birthday, so from now on, every year on that day, I'll be right there with you."

I'd never imagined he'd actually go through my phone.

I felt a quick flash of irritation at the invasion. But before I could say anything, Lily pushed through the crowd, her eyes already red.

"Summer." Her voice cracked. "I know you hate me. But going behind my back to call Yale and get me blacklisted? That's too far."

"What are you talking about?" I stared at her. "They called me because-"

"Stop pretending." The voices came from every direction. "We all know. You found out Yale's admissions rep had already promised to admit both Evan and Lily together, so you wrote in to report her. You were jealous."

"It doesn't even matter. Princeton reached out to Evan too, and he and Lily are going together now!"

"They're perfect for each other. You never stood a chance anyway."

It all fell into place.

Yale must have reconsidered. They couldn't justify the special admission for Lily just to keep Evan. Someone had spread a rumor that I was the one who'd interfered. So Evan had gone through my phone looking for proof.

One call from an admissions office. That was their "evidence."

I opened my mouth to explain.

Evan cut me off.

"Summer."

His tone could have frozen over a lake.

"I'd better not find out you've contacted Princeton. If you go anywhere near this, don't expect me to go easy on you."

One sentence. It sealed everything I was about to say back inside my throat.

My eyes flickered. A long pause.

Then I quietly looked down. "Okay."

Explanations are for people who matter.

He didn't. Not anymore.

My response seemed to catch Evan off guard.

He must have expected me to deny it. Argue. Make a scene.

Instead, I said nothing.

The teacher walked in and called everyone outside for the graduation photo.

After the photo, Evan was surrounded immediately. Dozens of girls, all hoping he'd give them the small custom pin he wore on the left side of his chest, right over his heart. A family heirloom tradition. The pin was meant to be given to the one person you carried closest.

Everyone expected me, the girl who had chased Evan the longest and the loudest, to be at the front of that crowd.

Instead, I stood apart.

My palm was open. In it lay a thin, delicate bracelet.

The only thing my mother had ever left me.

"Mom." I whispered it into the air. "Can you see? I'm going to your school."

My mother had graduated from Harvard. She'd given up everything for love, her career, her future, and had been repaid with betrayal and an early death.

I wasn't going to follow her path.

I was standing there, quietly making that promise to myself, when a hand appeared in front of me. Cool fingers. And in my open palm, something small and silver dropped.

A custom pin.

I looked up, startled.

Evan.

"Here." His voice was low. "This is for you."