Chapter 1

Mia Bennett read the message one last time before locking her phone screen.

She’d rewritten it so many times over the summer she could recite every word from memory, even with her eyes closed: *Ethan, there’s something I’ve wanted to tell you for a long time…* Eight years, to be exact. Long enough that saying it out loud finally felt less like a confession and more like something overdue.

Her thumb traced the corner of the phone case out of habit. Outside the window, the trees blurred past in streaks of late-summer green, and somewhere beneath the hum of the air conditioning she could feel her own pulse in her throat.

“You know,” Lily said, glancing over as they slowed toward Hawthorne University’s entrance, “most freshmen spend move-in day trying not to get lost.”

Mia smiled without looking up. “I’ll probably do that too.”

“No, you’ll spend the whole day looking for Ethan.” Lily pulled into a space beside the freshman dorms and cut the engine, the silence afterward oddly loud. “I’m talking about everything after that. Mia, you’ve liked that boy since we were fourteen. You followed him to the same university.”

“I followed the economics program.”

Lily gave her a look — the kind she’d been giving her since middle school, the one that meant *try again.*

Mia sighed. “…And maybe Ethan.”

“Maybe?”

“Definitely Ethan.”

They laughed, and for a moment the knot in Mia’s stomach loosened. Then Lily grew serious, twisting in her seat to face her properly. “Can I ask you something? Has Ethan ever actually given you a reason to believe he likes you?”

The smile faded from Mia’s face. She thought about it — really thought about it, the way she had a hundred times before. How he remembered her birthday every year without being reminded. How he always brought back her favorite strawberry gummies whenever he traveled, even from countries that didn’t sell them, hunting down some import shop just for her.

How, the night her parents’ marriage finally came apart during her sophomore year of high school, he’d shown up unannounced and sat with her on the porch until sunrise because she hadn’t wanted to be alone, and never once made her explain why.

He remembered everything. The little things and the important ones.

“He cares about me,” she said. “He wouldn’t do all that for just anyone.”

Lily didn’t argue. She just asked, quieter now, “Has he ever told you he wanted more than friendship?”

Mia looked down at her hands. “No.”

“Then stop falling in love with possibilities.”

The words lingered in the car longer than Lily probably meant them to. After a moment, Mia picked up her backpack, if only to have something to do with her hands. “That’s why I’m telling him today.”

“Good.”

“If he says no—”

“Then at least you’ll finally know.”

⸻

The campus buzzed with noise the second they stepped out of the car. Parents wheeled suitcases across the courtyard, student volunteers shouted directions through megaphones nobody was listening to, and a dozen clubs had set up folding tables handing out flyers that would mostly end up crumpled in the grass by lunch.

A speaker played music too loud for the season, and somewhere close by a girl was already crying into her mother’s shoulder.

Mia checked Ethan’s last text again, more for the comfort of it than the information. *I’m outside the student center. Come find me.* He always knew exactly where to wait for her — some old habit from childhood, back when getting lost together used to be the fun part.

She started across the courtyard, weaving through unfamiliar faces, rehearsing the first line of her confession one more time in her head. Then a conversation drifted over her shoulder from two girls walking just behind her. She wasn’t trying to listen. It was impossible not to.

“I swear they’re still together. I saw them at the arena yesterday.”

“So the rumors were true?”

“They’ve been together for months. I honestly thought Ryan Carter would stay single forever.”

“The hockey captain?”

“They’re literally the cutest couple on campus. Poor girls, half this university had a crush on Ryan.”

“And the other half had one on Ethan.”

They disappeared into the crowd, still laughing, and Mia slowed without quite meaning to. Ethan? There had to be another one — Hayes wasn’t exactly an uncommon last name, and there were probably a dozen Ethans on a campus this size. She told herself that twice before she believed it.

She pulled out her phone. *I’m here. Where are you?*

The reply came instantly. *Turn around.*

Her heart did something complicated. She turned toward the student center, and there he was — Ethan, standing near the entrance exactly where he said he’d be, exactly like always. He spotted her almost immediately, and a smile spread across his face. He lifted one hand and waved.

Before Mia could wave back, someone stepped up beside him.

The stranger laughed at something Ethan said. Ethan grinned, threw an arm around his shoulders like they’d known each other for years, and looked back at Mia.

Her phone buzzed in her hand. *There you are. Come over.*

A second message landed before she could even process the first.

*There’s someone I want you to meet.*

Mia’s feet didn’t move. Whatever she’d rehearsed in the car, in the mirror, in her head for eight straight years, suddenly felt very far away.

Across the courtyard, Ethan was still waiting, still smiling, still waving her over like nothing in the world was wrong. And maybe nothing was. Maybe it was just a coincidence, a name, a stranger, a story that had nothing to do with her at all.

She wanted to believe that.

She made herself start walking anyway, phone still gripped tight in one hand, the two unread messages glowing on the screen like something she wasn’t ready to open.