Chapter 3

Cole pov

I recognized her immediately. The second I stepped out of the car, I saw it, her eyes lighting up with recognition, with something close to excitement, like she'd been waiting years for exactly this moment. I shattered it without breaking stride. Walked straight past her, past the box she held out like it meant something, like a decade could be undone with chocolate and buttercream.

I hadn't forgiven her. I wasn't sure I ever would.

A few months after she disappeared that summer without a word, my mother did the exact same thing. I woke up one morning and she was just gone, no goodbye, no explanation, nothing but an empty side of the closet and a silence my father never bothered to fill. Not long after, he married someone else. Brought home a woman, and with her, a stepbrother I never asked for.

Two women. Both gone without a word. And now one of them was standing in my hallway holding a cake like ten years hadn't happened.

When she found me at my locker, all I could see was my mother's face laid over hers, the same easy warmth right before the exit, the same certainty that she could just walk back in whenever she pleased and expect to be welcomed.

I told myself I didn't care. Maybe I'd just gotten good at pretending I didn't.

I entered the classroom to find a few of my teammates crowded near the doorway, the usual pack, loud, restless, still buzzing from whatever had happened at practice that morning.

"What's up, man?" Aaron said, falling into step beside me.

I shook my head and kept walking, hoping that would be the end of it. It wasn't.

They followed me all the way to my seat, dragging chairs closer, clearly unwilling to let the silence sit unexamined. I dropped into my chair and pulled out my textbook, more for something to do with my hands than any real interest in the material.

"Did you and Rhys fight again?" Aaron asked, leaning against the desk beside mine.

"No."

"Then what's with the face?"

"What face?"

"The one you're wearing right now. Like somebody kicked your dog."

"I don't have a dog."

"Exactly my point."

I didn't answer. There wasn't an answer I felt like giving, not one that didn't involve explaining a summer in Paris, a mother who left before sunrise, and a girl who'd apparently decided today was the day to resurrect all of it with a chocolate cake.

Aaron opened his mouth again, probably to press further, when the door swung open and the whole conversation died in my throat.

Kayla walked in.

Rhys was right behind her, entirely too close, entirely too pleased with himself, and I felt something cold settle low in my chest, he was holding the exact same box she'd been carrying an hour ago.

The cake.

She'd given him the cake.

I told myself it didn't matter. I told myself I hadn't wanted it, hadn't wanted any of it, the reunion, the explanation, whatever she'd been trying to hand me at my locker like it could undo ten years in one conversation. I told myself all of that in the space of about two seconds, and none of it made the weight in my chest feel any lighter.

Priya trailed in after them, throwing me a look I couldn't quite read, something between suspicion and satisfaction, like she already knew exactly what she was watching unfold and found it more interesting than she should have.

I kept my eyes on my textbook. Or I tried to.

"Yo," Aaron said quietly, following my gaze without even trying to hide it. "Isn't that the girl who—"

"Don't," I said.

He held up both hands and backed off, but I could feel him still watching me, still doing the math, still one comment away from saying something I didn't want said out loud in a room full of people who'd repeat it by lunch.

Across the room, Rhys pulled out the chair next to his own desk and gestured for Kayla to take it, that easy, practiced charm of his on full display, like he hadn't just spent the whole hallway making her laugh over a cake that was never supposed to be his.

She sat and smiled at him, small, a little uncertain, but real. Nothing like the smile she'd worn walking toward my locker that morning.

I looked at them for exactly three seconds too long.

Then I made myself look away, back down at a textbook page I wasn't reading, back to a silence I'd apparently been wearing on my face all morning without realizing it.

It didn't matter, I told myself again. She could sit wherever she wanted. She could hand her cake to whoever she wanted. None of that had anything to do with me.

I almost believed it.

Almost. Aaron leaned in one more time, lowering his voice like he'd finally pieced something together he wasn't supposed to say out loud.

"Man," he muttered. "You've got a face like somebody just took something that was yours."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Sure you don't." He glanced toward Rhys and Kayla, then back at me, something almost gentle under the smirk. "You know he only picked her up because you dropped her, right?"

"I didn't drop anything. There was nothing to drop."

"Right," Aaron said, clearly not buying a word of it. "That's why you've been staring at your textbook for five minutes without turning a single page."

I looked down. He wasn't wrong.

"You talk too much," I muttered.

"And you don't talk enough. Somebody's gotta balance it out."

I didn't answer. I forced my eyes back to the page, even though nothing on it was actually making it into my head.

What the hell was he doing with her?