جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 30

Mia's pov I read his text three times before I decided I wasn't going to just accept it."Something came up tonight, can we push our thing to another day? Sorry, it's been a crazy week."It was polite. It was reasonable. It was also, I was fairly sure, complete nonsense, because four days ago this same boy had held my hand on a park bench and told me he missed me in a voice that didn't sound like it belonged to somebody who canceled plans over vague excuses a few days later.I drove to his house instead of texting back.His car was in the driveway, which told me whatever had come up hadn't come up anywhere that required leaving the house, and I stood on his porch for a second working up the nerve before I knocked, my heart doing something anxious and uncertain that felt uncomfortably familiar, an echo of every other doorstep confrontation this whole mess had put me through since PhoneGate started it all.He opened the door looking surprised, and not the good kind of surprised."Mia.

Jordan's pov Dr. Osei pulled up the scan on the monitor and turned it toward me and my mother, and even though I couldn't read the shapes on the screen the way she could, I could read her face well enough to know before she said a single word that whatever those shapes meant, they weren't the news we'd been hoping to hear after two rounds of treatment that had already cost my mother so much."The tumor has responded somewhat," she said, her tone careful, measured, the tone of someone choosing each word with real deliberation. "But not as much as we'd hoped at this stage, and there's a smaller area near the lymph nodes we're now watching closely that wasn't as prominent on the last scan. It's not a step backward exactly, but it does mean we're going to need to adjust the treatment plan going forward.""Adjust how," I asked, my hand finding my mother's on the armrest between our chairs without either of us really deciding to reach for the other."A more aggressive combination, likely,

Mia's pov Priya showed up with two milkshakes instead of one the morning after my kitchen confrontation with Eli, setting mine down in front of me on the porch steps without asking whether I actually wanted it, which was exactly the right call, because I hadn't known I wanted it until it was already in my hand."Okay," she said, sitting down beside me. "Tell me everything, and don't leave out the part where you clearly want to scream into a pillow.""I don't even know where to start.""Start with the part that hurt the most."I turned the milkshake cup slowly between my hands, watching the condensation bead against my fingers, and I let the whole thing spill out of me the way it had been sitting there since I left his kitchen, the accusation about whether I was actually trying, the way his voice had sounded almost confused even as he said it, like the thought hadn't quite fit him right on the way out."It was like talking to a different person," I said. "Four days earlier he's holdin

Nate's pov Claire was the one who suggested the whole thing, catching me between classes and saying it so casually I didn't think twice before agreeing to it."Everyone's been so heavy lately," she said, falling into step beside me on the quad. "Between Renata's treatment and everything with Eli and Mia, I feel like nobody's just relaxed in weeks. You should have people over. Nothing big, just pizza and a movie, remind everyone that normal still exists somewhere.""That's actually not a bad idea.""Right? I can help you put the word out if you want. I know Jordan could probably use a night off from all of it, and honestly, I think Eli could use the distraction too."I should have caught it then, probably, the way she'd folded Jordan and Eli into the same breath without mentioning Mia at all, but I was thinking about my own apartment needing a good excuse to get cleaned and whether I had enough chairs for however many people showed up, and it wasn't until later, once everyone had act

Mia's pov He led me toward the hallway just outside the living room, close enough that the conversation could still bleed into the room behind us, far enough that it felt, for a moment, like we might actually get some privacy to finish what we'd started days ago."I've been thinking about what you asked me," he said, his voice low, careful. "Where the doubt came from. I still can't fully trace it, but I know it's there, and I don't think it's fair to either of us to pretend it isn't.""Okay. So talk to me about it. Actually talk, this time.""I keep coming back to the same thing." He rubbed a hand over his jaw, frustration and something rawer than frustration working underneath his voice. "You've had six months, Mia. Six months to find an answer, if you actually wanted one badly enough. And now, right when things start feeling real between us again, suddenly you're desperate to know. I can't help wondering if some part of you likes keeping it open. Because as long as nobody knows for