LOGINEvelyn's POV“People change the world in their twenties, become billionaires at twenty-five, land on Forbes lists before thirty, and anyone still talking about their 'prime years' at thirty-five is usually trying to convince themselves they didn't already miss them.”“That is outrageously biased.”The response came without hesitation.“And when men spend their entire lives chasing twenty-two-year-old women, nobody calls that biased.”For the first time all evening, Frank actually stopped talking.The silence lasted several seconds.Then he laughed.“Okay.”He lifted both hands.“That's annoyingly fair.”“Maddie is always fair,” I said.“Thank you.”“She just happens to express fairness in the most extreme way possible.”Maddie looked delighted.“Extreme fairness is still fairness.”She nodded as though this settled the matter completely, then suddenly straightened in her chair, and the moment her expression changed, a very specific sense of dread settled over me.Because I knew that l
Evelyn's POVMaddie looked offended that such a simple concept required explanation.“Because men start getting weird after twenty-five.”The confidence with which she delivered this statement suggested she believed it belonged in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.“Twenty-two-year-old men text you at two in the morning asking if you're awake. Twenty-three-year-old men will drive three hours just to spend forty minutes with you. Twenty-four-year-old men will secretly spend an entire week being jealous because you liked a photo of some actor on Instagram, but the moment they start approaching thirty, something terrible happens.”Frank was already laughing.“What terrible thing?”“They become interested in investment portfolios.”The disgust in her voice was immediate.“They start talking about tax strategies, real estate markets, mortgage rates, retirement accounts, and whatever horrifying adult topic they discovered on a podcast that week, and before you know it they're giving unsoli
Evelyn's POVAfter several rounds, everyone had already put down more than a few fingers, and the crackling of the fire mixed with the distant music drifting through the trees while the kind of cold that only existed in the California mountains late at night slowly turned everyone's cheeks a little red, so when it was finally Maddie's turn and she set her beer bottle on her knee with a smile that immediately made me feel as though something terrible was about to happen, I instinctively braced myself.“I have never been dumped.”The moment the words left her mouth, I silently folded down one finger.Frank folded one down too.Julian also folded one down.Only Maddie remained seated there with all five fingers still raised, looking so serenely untouched by heartbreak that it almost felt offensive.Frank stared at her for a full three seconds.“Wait, Maddie.”“Yeah?”“You've never been dumped?”She actually looked a little hurt by his disbelief.“Why does everyone react like they've just
Evelyn 's POVBefore I even had a chance to decide where I wanted to sit, she was already on her feet, steering me toward an empty camping chair positioned directly beside Julian's with the efficiency of a professional event planner executing a seating chart months in the making, and by the time I realized what was happening, she'd already deposited me into the chair and returned to her own seat with the self-congratulatory confidence of someone who believed she had just improved everyone's life.The entire maneuver happened so smoothly and so quickly that I was genuinely suspicious she had rehearsed it beforehand, because there was no hesitation, no uncertainty, and certainly no room for objections, which left me with the uncomfortable realization that in Maddie's mind, she had apparently already determined exactly where every person belonged tonight, and Julian and I had somehow ended up occupying positions she considered both obvious and inevitable.I opened my mouth to protest.Ma
Evelyn's POVThe name hit me like a physical blow, and suddenly every thought inside my head scattered in different directions while my lungs seemed to forget how to work properly, because Sebastian wasn't just a random name in this story but my husband, my ex-husband, Julian's cousin, the man whose wedding Julian had attended, the man whose relationship Julian had been forced to watch from the sidelines for years, and the man Frank had just identified as the reason for an entire decade of heartbreak. Meanwhile, Frank casually took another sip of his hot chocolate and leaned back against the table with infuriating composure, looking for all the world like someone discussing ordinary facts instead of detonating an emotional bomb in the middle of my life.“Evelyn,” he said at last, and there was now genuine disbelief in his voice, the kind that comes from watching an intelligent person repeatedly miss something obvious, “I honestly don't understand how you've managed to do this, because
Evelyn 's POVThe lantern light flickered.“So naturally we became curious.”A smile touched his face.“And once we became curious, the answer wasn't especially difficult to figure out.”The blood rushed loudly in my ears.“Because people don't voluntarily drive across the city several times a week to sit around at a riding club unless there's a reason.”I swallowed.“Then one day,” Frank continued, his voice softening slightly as though he already knew how the story ended before he reached the ending, “he stopped going.”The campsite suddenly felt very far away.The trees.The wind.The lantern.Everything seemed distant.“He stopped showing up. He stopped making excuses. He stopped finding reasons to be there, and from that point forward it was almost like watching somebody close a door and lock it behind them.”My throat tightened.Painfully.“And after that he changed.”Frank looked down at the dirt beneath his feet.“He started working like a man trying to exhaust himself. He fil
Evelyn's POVThe walk to UCLA isn’t far—about twenty minutes if I take my usual route—and it turns out to be the perfect amount of time to let my brain slowly shift from living mode into work mode.Most of these past few days, I’ve been buried in the veterinary school labs, working alongside their
Evelyn's POV“Do you like me, Julian?”The question left my mouth before my heart had time to stop it.And the second the words were out there between us, hanging in the cold ocean air, I wanted to take them back.Because honestly, this couldn’t just be my imagination anymore. Somewhere along the w
Evelyn's POV“So what if we got along?” I let out a small laugh at my own expense, the sound thin and bitter against the crashing waves behind us. “What exactly did you expect me to do? Keep acting like some pathetic woman crying herself apart over a failed marriage, clinging to you because I neede
Evelyn's POVEvelyn's POVHis hand was warm—noticeably, unmistakably warm—and in contrast, mine felt almost cold, the difference so stark that it made me aware of my own body in a way I hadn’t been a moment ago; his fingers were long, defined, the kind of hands people noticed, and right now they hel







