Chapter 1

Three days before the spring formal, Hailey Vanderbilt posted a TikTok video. She's Jackson Carter's childhood sweetheart, and there she was, spinning around in the custom dress I'd spent the whole semester designing.

She stood in front of the white columns at the Kappa Kappa Gamma house, the lavender satin catching the sunlight. The caption read, "Formal season sneak peek. When his frat pin is on your heart, but your heart belongs to someone else."

I typed straight into the comments, "Keep it. I'm not going anyway."

Five seconds later, the video disappeared.

My phone blew up. Hailey was calling. "Chloe, oh my God, why would you say that? You know I was just trying it on for pictures!" Her voice cracked with that practiced little sob I'd heard a hundred times before.

Before I could even answer, Jackson changed his Instagram profile picture to a shot of him and Hailey standing in front of the ATO house. Both of them were dressed up, smiling as if I had never existed.

Then he called.

"Hailey and I grew up together," he said. "Our families have been friends since the Fairweather Country Club days. If you're going to throw a fit about this, maybe we shouldn't go to the dance at all."

I wasn't throwing a fit.

I just didn't want to go.

*****

Later that afternoon, Jackson walked into our off-campus apartment while I was finishing an email to Professor Anderson about the dress.

"What are you working on?" he asked.

He leaned over and glanced at my screen, that lazy smirk on his face.

I kept typing and gave a quiet "Mmm."

He chuckled. "Your fashion professor giving you a hard time again? It's just a dress. Is it really that serious?"

My fingers paused on the keys.

Four years ago, I first spotted Jackson at a party after the homecoming game.

He wore his ATO jacket and stood in the middle of everyone, and I fell for him on the spot.

When we finally met through friends, and I texted him first, he took forever to reply. I told myself he was just busy.

To fit into his world, I studied every detail of his family's old-money life, the Thanksgiving traditions, the sailing terms, all of it. He just shrugged and said, "Relax, Chloe. You don't have to try so hard. I like the real you."

But later, when his frat brothers raved about the cranberry sauce I'd made, he gave a cold little laugh. "You guys haven't tasted the real thing. Hailey's is the authentic version."

I found out months later that Hailey hadn't cooked a thing. She'd just picked it up at the grocery store.

I pushed the memory aside and kept typing my email.

Jackson saw I wasn't reacting, so he wrapped his arms around me from behind, ruffled my hair, and grinned. "Come on, babe. Don't be mad. Look what I brought you."

He set a Starbucks latte in front of me.

I glanced at it, opened the fridge, and pointed to the two identical whole-milk lattes already sitting inside. "Thanks, but I can't drink these. You know I'm lactose intolerant."

Jackson froze. His face went dark.

This was the third time he'd gotten my coffee order wrong.

I always ask for oat milk. He never remembers.

I wasn't even that upset about the coffee anymore.

What really hit me was when my fashion design professor, Eleanor Anderson, questioned my academic honesty during her office hours.

"That dress really is my final project," I told her, sitting across from her desk. On her computer screen was a screenshot of Hailey's TikTok.

"Ms. Miller," she said, pushing her glasses up, "this video already has twelve thousand views. If you let a class project be used for social media or any kind of public display without permission, it breaks our academic integrity rules."

"I didn't let anyone use it!" My voice shook. "That girl is my boyfriend's friend. She took the dress without asking."

Professor Anderson's tone softened a little. "Then I need proof that you're the original designer. Show me your sketches, fabric receipts, and progress photos."

I had all of that. But when I got back to the apartment, my black sketchbook, the one filled with every drawing of the dress, was gone.

I called Jackson right away. "Did you see my black sketchbook? The one with all my dress designs in it?"

He sounded irritated. "Haven't seen it. Did you lose it again? Chloe, can you stop being so scatterbrained?"

"This is serious!" I said. "Professor Anderson is investigating me."

He cut me off. "It's just a dress. Hailey already apologized. What more do you want?"

I hung up on him.

In the end, my Sigma Kappa sorority president, Maya, saved the day. She helped me dig through my phone's cloud backups and found the photos I needed.

When I handed the full set of evidence to Professor Anderson, she let out a long sigh.

"I believe you, Ms. Miller. But in these circles, some people will always try to take what isn't theirs. You have to learn to protect yourself."

That night, Jackson came home with takeout, acting as if nothing had happened.

"Oh, by the way," he said casually, "my mom asked if you could make cranberry sauce. She wants you to try our family recipe for Thanksgiving."

I looked at him and suddenly felt completely drained.

"Sure," I said quietly. "I'll make it."