로그인Ember's POV"You have nothing to worry about," I said. "With Ethan. Whatever he thinks is going to happen — it is not going to happen."Knox looked at me."You have been keeping things from me," he said. "That is what I am worried about. Not Ethan specifically. The keeping." He held my gaze. "Every time something happens that you do not want to deal with in front of me, you file it somewhere I cannot see it. And then I find out from someone else. Or from Ethan himself, in a corridor, through a text sent days ago that I have been carrying." He paused. "That is what worries me. Not his text. The pattern."I looked at him.He was right.I had been looking at it as individual decisions — this specific thing I did not tell him, that specific moment I chose to manage alone. He was looking at it as what it was, which was a pattern of the same decision made repeatedly.Rebecca cleared her throat.We both looked at her.She was picking up her bag from the bench with the specific efficiency of
Ember's POVKnox looked at the field for a moment longer.Then he said, "I heard Ethan cornered you in the hallway this morning."I looked at him."He told everyone he met with you yesterday," Knox said. "Outside the dormitory. One of the team members heard it and told me." He kept his eyes on the grass in front of the bench. "He made sure people heard it. That is what I was told — he said it loudly enough in the corridor that it was not accidental."Rebecca was very still beside me."Knox," I said."Is it true?" he said. He looked at me now. Not the angry version — the version that was sitting very carefully on top of the angry version and keeping it there with effort. "Did you meet him yesterday?"I held his gaze."Yes," I said.He looked at the field again.The muscle in his jaw moved once."He called me," I said. "He said he had something to tell me. Something about the campus, something important. I went because I needed to know what it was." I paused. "I should have told you. I
Ember's POVThe silence sat between us for a while.Not uncomfortable. The kind that had things in it — things that had been said and things that were still finding their shape. Rebecca was looking at the field and I was looking at my hands and the morning was gray around us and neither of us was in a hurry to fill it.Then I said it."I am not going back to Ethan."Rebecca looked at me."I know that is what you are thinking," I said. "That the way I talked about him just now — that I still have something there that makes me read him as more than a threat." I held her gaze. "That is not what it is. It is complicated in a different way." I paused. "I am trying to understand what he knows. That is the thing I cannot let go of. Not him.""Then what is it?" she said.I looked at the field."I am in love with Knox," I said.The words came out plainly, without the careful management I had been applying to everything involving Knox for the better part of the semester. Just the sentence, plac
Ember's POVThe lecture ended at ten-thirty.I packed my notes without looking at them and went out into the corridor and found the classroom Rebecca should have been in — her ten o'clock was on the same floor, three doors down. I knocked and opened it slightly and the lecturer looked up and I scanned the seats quickly.Rebecca was not there.I let the door close and stood in the corridor.She had either not gone to class or had left early and neither of those was something Rebecca did on a normal day. Rebecca went to class. Rebecca stayed for the full session and took notes that were better organized than the lecturer's slides and reviewed them the same evening. Rebecca skipping a lecture meant something had gotten past the point where she was managing it the way she normally managed things.I went downstairs and through the main building exit and across the path toward the sports field.It was the place she went when she needed the particular kind of quiet that came from being outsi
Ember's POVEthan looked at me."Anything," he said. "That is not a word I am using loosely. Whatever it takes. Whatever you need me to do. Whatever form the making-up takes." He held my gaze. "You name it and I will do it. That is the offer.""Ethan—""I am not asking you to take me back," he said. "I am not standing here with that as the goal. I know what you said yesterday and I heard it." He paused. "I am asking for an action. Something concrete. Something I can do that is not apologizing with words because I have apologized with words and you have told me what you think of that and you are right." He held my gaze steadily. "Give me something to do.""There is nothing—""There is always something," he said. "You are the most precise person I know. You have a list in your head of every wrong thing I did and the order I did them in and what each one cost you. I know you do because that is how you work." He said it without accusation — just the plain knowledge of someone who had spen
Ember's POVRebecca walked.She did not storm — she was not the storming kind. She turned and went down the corridor with the specific even pace of someone who had made a decision about where they needed to be and was going there, and she did not look back.I watched her go.Claire stayed for approximately four seconds longer. She looked at me with the flat, assessing expression that was Claire's version of concern — not soft, just present and taking stock. Then she said, "I need to get something from the printing office," and walked in the other direction, which left Ethan and I standing in the corridor as the morning traffic moved around us like water around two rocks.I looked at him."What you just did," I said."I needed to speak with you," he said."You could have called. You could have texted. You could have waited until I was alone." I kept my voice level. "Instead you chose to do it in front of Rebecca and Claire in a way that guaranteed they would find out I lied to them." I
Knox's POVThe bonfire had been going for two hours and I had spent most of it watching Ember from across the crowd without making it obvious that I was watching her.I was good at that. Years of learning how to stay alert in a room full of people without letting anyone see that you were doing it h
Ember's POVAfter Knox left, the three of us stood in the room and Jessica was going on about the way he had supposedly been looking at her, and Kimberly was shaking her head saying no, she had watched the whole thing and Knox had barely taken his eyes off me for a second, and I was standing there
Knox's POVThe moment the door clicked shut behind her, I lost the fight. I had been holding it back since the second I turned from the window and saw her eyes open in the dark, through all of her questions and all of her anger and all of the things she said that I knew I deserved. I had stood ther
Ember's POV I woke up in the middle of the night and for about three seconds, I didn't know where I was. Then it all came back. The party. Ethan. The key. Knox's apartment and the trophies on every shelf and the way he had looked at me when I told him I had never done this before — not with pity







