Chapter 12
In high school, we both went to this elite private academy called Summit Hall Academy,
The security was militarygrade. Retired military.
The shuttle came every morning and afternoon on the dot. You couldn’t even get a pizza delivered.
My parents sent me there to start learning how to run the family business.
But the tighter the cage, the harder I fought to breathe.
I was a little wild. Didn’t like being told what to do.
I’d sneak out during gym to buy milkshake. Hide on the roof during study hall to read comics.
Declan, in the class next door, was famous for being quiet.
So quiet I sometimes wondered if he was real.
He didn’t join any cliques. Didn’t run for student council. In that place where everyone was clawing for the top, he was like a ghost that didn’t belong.
And I loved bothering ghosts.
One evening in eleventh grade, I cornered him at the end of the hall.
He was walking to the library with a book in his hands.
When I blocked his way, he looked up.
Those dark eyes had no emotion in them, but he didn’t step around me.
“Declan, do you even know how to smile?”
I rose on my toes and leaned closer,
He took half a step back, his shoulders hitting the wall. He still held the book perfectly straight.
“Yes.”
“Then smile for me.”
He didn’t smile. His lashes just fluttered.
I thought it was funny and leaned in a little more.
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He turned his head, like he meant to avoid me, but his lips brushed the corner of my mouth.
Soft. But the heat was real.
He didn’t react.
My face burned like I’d caught fire.
I didn’t want to lose, so I lifted my chin and said in a voice I didn’t even believe, “You’re the
most… the least reactive person I’ve ever kissed.”
I’d never kissed anyone before.
He was my first, but I would’ve died before admitting it.
I turned and ran. Didn’t sleep all night.
I never cornered him again.
Years later, at the first business meeting we ever had, at a bid review for a project he lost to me, he
suddenly brought it up.
“That day,” he said, pausing, “I did it on purpose.”
I froze.
“When you leaned in, I could have turned my head all the way.” He dropped his eyes, and that
oldfox smile came back. “I didn’t want to.”
Back then I thought he was just bitter about losing and trying to mess with me.
First semester of senior year, I couldn’t take the school’s pressure anymore.
I told my parents I was going to Port Ellis to finish high school and apply to college. They couldn’t
talk me out of it. Finally they let me go,
So I went to that loud, hot city. And I met Trent. Back then the Harrisons were still on top. He was that boy with the sunshine smile and the sharp edges, Loud, proud, highprofile,
Nothing like the deadeyed rich kids at Summit Hall.
I remembered his smile all the way through college in the UK.
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And Declan… I knew he’d gone to the UK too. Same school as me. But we never looked for each other
except for the occasional runin.
It wasn’t until years later that I heard from someone else how he’d quietly kept track of everything
about me.
He knew my major. Which street I lived on. Which library I went to.
Every accidental meeting had been planned. I just never noticed.
He was even going to confess at my graduation ceremony. But I didn’t go to my graduation. I’d bought a plane ticket back to Port Ellis first thing that morning. Because Trent said he missed me.
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