03
“Aubrey, why didn’t you wait for me this morning?”
10:58
Jax had been late to school. He cornered me after first period, his tone laced with a playful grievance as he placed a carton of milk
on my desk.
My hand, busy scribbling vocabulary words, paused. I glanced at the milk.
“I already had breakfast,” I said. “And I’m not going to walk with you anymore. I’m getting to school earlier from now on.”
He slid into the empty seat beside me, looking genuinely confused. He propped his chin on his hand. Did I do something to piss you off? We’ve always walked together.”
“It’s different now.” I set down my pen and took a deep breath, forcing a small smile. “You have a girlfriend, Jax: We need some
distance.”
His expression froze for a second before realization dawned. “She won’t care. She knows about you…”
“I care.”
I enunciated each word clearly. “I don’t want to be the target when you two eventually have a fight about something. I don’t want to
be the problem.”
“Aubrey…”
Jax King was not known for his patience. The fact that he’d even let the conversation go this long was a minor miracle. I could see
his was running out.
His face hardened. He shot up from the chair, the legs screeching against the linoleum, a sound that grated on my already raw ner-
ves.
“Fine,” he bit out. “Whatever you want.”
Then he was gone.
I lowered my head, closing my eyes against the sudden burn.
I’d spent all of last night on my balcony, letting the cold air whip at me, debating what to do. Should I keep playing the fool, pretend- ing I was just his friend while hiding this suffocating crush? Or was it time to let our lifelong connection finally fracture?
They say you can’t hide the way you look at someone you love. If I kept following him around, it wouldn’t be fair to me, and it woul-
} dn’t be fair to Chloe.
No girlfriend on earth wants her boyfriend’s overly close “girl–best–friend” hanging around.
From that day on, Jax didn’t speak to me. If we passed in the hall, his eyes slid right over me as if I were a stranger.
The girl by his side was no longer me, it was Chloe. He introduced her to his entire circle of friends, the world that had once been
ours.
She was his first love. The girl he was crazy about.
I focused on my studies. Like everyone else, I heard the stories of their epic romance through the grapevine.
Chloe was starving herself for a dance competition, and Jax had his family’s personal chef make her low–fat, high–protein meals to bring to school.
A jock from a rival school wouldn’t stop harassing Chloe, cornering her in an alley after school. Rumor was, Jax beat him so badly
TO SK
Chapter 1
he ended up in the hospital.
On the next monthly exams, I reclaimed my spot as first in our class.
10:58
My guidance counselor once told me to stop worrying so much about Jax, that he was dragging down my academic potential. The Kings had more money than God; it didn’t matter if Jax graduated or not.
That afternoon, I stared out the window at the spectacular sunset.
“Aubrey, where do you want to go for college?”
It was a hot evening last summer. Jax was sitting next to me, idly twirling a strand of my hair around his long finger.
“Northwood University,” I’d said without hesitation.
“That’s so far.”
I never told him the real reason. It wasn’t just because Northwood was a top–tier school. It was because I had to get away from
here. Away from that house.
My father was a cliché. The second he made money, he found a new woman. My mother refused to divorce him, convinced it was
her fault for not giving him a son.
In the dead of night, she would sometimes break down, pointing a shaking finger at me and screaming, asking why I couldn’t have
been a boy, then her husband would have stayed faithful.
She finally did have a son.
My father’s return to the family was brief. And once my little brother was born, my mother poured every ounce of herself into him. She had her son now, her security for old age.
“Okay… then I’ll go to Northwood too,” the boy beside me had boasted. “You’re such a klutz, you’ll be a mess without me there to
look out for you.”
That cocky, grinning boy was the only light in my broken world. I was desperate to hold onto him.
I was willing to waste all my time on him, to sacrifice my own ambitions. Even if I didn’t get into Northwood, as long as I got into whatever school he did, that would be enough.
