Prologue
DOMINIC
Ididn’t see the end coming until it was too late.
Ellie had been acting off all weekend, but I’d chalked it up to stress. Spring finals were around the corner, and after we got through them, everything would be fine. We’d spend the summer traversing Western Europe, just the two of us, soaking up every moment together before the next school year began. I let her pick each stop, curating our itinerary, because I didn’t give a shit where we went—wherever she was, I wanted to be.
Life and circumstances forced us to attend different colleges. Ellie tried to convince me it would be fun, that we would have more authentic college experiences apart. I didn’t care about an authentic college experience when it meant being away from her. Despite the distance, we’d found a way to stay connected. Our universities shared a study abroad program, and from the moment we discovered it, we’d made a pact: every summer would be an adventure, together.
Sometimes, I miss the version of me who believed that was enough. Who thought we’d always be enough.
“Bro, there’s something wrong with your girl,” Brett, myroommate, announced from the doorway of our dorm. His eyes were glazed and heavy-lidded from his standard beer and blunt for breakfast.
“What do you mean, ‘wrong’? Like, sick?” My lips pressed together as a gnawing sensation creeped into my chest.
He shrugged. “Tiff saw her crying in the bathroom.”
That got my attention. Ellie wasn’t a crier. I’d seen her cry before, but as we had gotten older, she’d gotten in the habit of locking those feelings away—until the pressure built too much, and she finally broke. If she was crying now, something was seriously wrong.
“When the fuck was this?” I snapped, already on edge.
Brett blinked, startled. “Don’t shoot the messenger, Dom.”
I was out of my chair before he finished speaking. It clattered to the floor behind me, but I didn’t care. If Ellie was upset, I needed to find her.
I was done tiptoeing around whatever was going on with her this weekend. Honesty had always been the foundation of our relationship—since the beginning, back when we were just kids.
When I was seven, my parents finally achieved their American dream of owning a home. I didn’t want to move because it meant starting over at a new school. They bought an old farmhouse with a couple hundred acres of neglected land. The house was crumbling, the fields overgrown, and to me and my older brother, Adrian, the whole place looked like a dump. But to my parents, it was full of potential—something they saw clearly, even if we couldn’t.
The day we moved in, I set out to explore what I reluctantly considered my new playground. What I found instead was the most stunning pair of green eyes I’d ever seen, as translucent as green sea glass. To this day, those eyes are impossible to forget.
Crouched by the weathered railroad tie fence dividing our properties, tall, gangly, all elbows and attitude, was Elyse Ledger, the girl next door.
We became friends that day—or, more accurately, I said hi, and she promptly decided we were going to be best friends. And we were, despite our differences. My parents were immigrants, and our life was modest. The Ledgers, on the other hand, were practically local royalty—wealthy, well-connected, and pillars of the community. Ellie could’ve easily been a spoiled brat, but she wasn’t.
Instead of just growing up alongside one another, we grew into each other. Our lives wove together so tightly that I couldn’t imagine mine without her. As kids, we spent every free moment playing. As we got older, our parents started enforcing rules about how much time we spent alone and keeping doors open when we hung out. Our innocent minds didn’t understand what our parents clearly saw coming. Even then, they couldn’t stop the inevitable.
In seventh grade, we went to our first boy-girl party. Ellie was a bundle of nerves, convinced by teen movies it would devolve into a game of Seven Minutes in Heaven. We both knew everything about each other—including the fact that neither of us had been kissed. I don’t think I had fully processed my feelings for her at the time, but the thought of another boy getting to be her first kiss made my chest ache in a way I couldn’t grasp yet. So, I suggested we get it over with—kiss each other.
To my surprise, she didn’t argue. She agreed like it was the best idea in the world. And so, at the very fence where we’d first met, it happened. It was awkward and barely lasted a second, but I was her first, and she was mine. I liked that more than I was ready to admit. In true Ellie fashion, she brushed it off like it was no big deal and acted as if it never happened for over two years.
It wasn’t until an upperclassman invited her to prom at the end of our freshman year of high school that something in me finally snapped. It was hard enough watching my friends start to notice her, seeing her go on dates, but this was different. He was older, popular, and Ellie was easily the most beautiful girl in school.
I couldn’t stop her from going, but I spent the entire night pacing the road in front of the Ledger house, imagining the worst. Was he touching her? Kissing her? Did she like him? I was spiraling, and I think her parents knew it because they didn’t throw me off their property, like they should have.
When the limo finally pulled up at midnight, I exhaled a sigh of relief as she stepped out alone. The moment her eyes found mine, her shoulders dropped, noticeably releasing tension. And I stood suspended in time, unable to tear my eyes off her—she was breathtaking. The dress hugged her body in all the places I’d only dreamed of touching, her hair and makeup flawless, like she’d walked straight out of a dream. The sight of her hit me hard, stealing the air from my lungs.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, not at all surprised to see me, in fact it looked like she was expecting me.
I shrugged, attempting to play it cool. “I wanted to make sure you made it home okay.”
She laughed quietly as her heels echoed against the pavement the closer she got to me.
“Where’s your date?” I tried my best to not make the word date sound like a bad word, but I’m sure it came out sounding something close to disgust.
Her forehead creased. “He got sick. It was super weird, one minute he was fine, and the next he was puking his guts out.”
I wasn’t as religious as my extremely Catholic upbringing would suggest, but I thanked God in that moment, that the big man upstairs had been looking out for me, and gave herdate a stomach bug, or more likely a mild case of alcohol poisoning.
