The moment my boyfriend placed a perfectly peeled shrimp onto another woman’s plate, I knew our relationship was already dead. What I didn’t know was that the woman smiling sweetly across the dinner table wasn’t the one who would break my heart that night. Kale Sterling would manage that all by himself.
Chapter 3
Kai kept his promise a few weeks later.
He drove me outside Boston without telling me where we were going. The city faded behind us, then the suburbs, until we reached an old brick building surrounded by weeds and bare trees.
My breath caught.
The abandoned children’s home.
I had lived there after my parents died in a car accident and my grandmother passed away several years later. I had not returned since my adoption.
“Kai,” I whispered. “How do you know this place?”
He took my hand.
“Do you remember a chubby little kid everybody picked on?”
I stared at him.
Memories broke open.
A boy with round cheeks and enormous eyes. Children stealing his lunch. Throwing his shoes into a puddle. Me charging after them and declaring that anyone who bothered him would answer to me.
I had made him call me Boss.
He had followed me everywhere.
Then one day, he had been adopted.
“Kai?”
His smile trembled.
“Hi, Boss.”
I covered my mouth.
That was why he had always seemed familiar.
He led me inside and found an old wall beneath layers of peeling paint.
Two childish messages were still visible.
Someday my sidekick and I will see the whole world.
Below it, in smaller handwriting:
Someday I’m going to follow my boss everywhere.
I laughed through sudden tears.
Kai stepped behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist.
“You asked why I liked you,” he said. “It didn’t happen suddenly. I never forgot you.”
I turned in his arms.
“You knew who I was this whole time?”
“The minute I saw you freshman year.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“You were already chasing Kale.”
I winced.
He smiled. “And you looked happy. I thought being your friend was better than making your life complicated.”
That day, I stopped pretending I was merely allowing Kai to pursue me.
I kissed him first.
A month later, he asked me officially to be his girlfriend in front of our friends, stammering through a speech he had apparently practiced for a week.
Someone filmed it.
By morning, half the campus had seen the video.
Most comments were sweet.
One was not.
This is ridiculous.
The profile picture was a husky.
I had a suspicion about who owned the account.
I blocked it.
That afternoon, one of Kai’s teammates called.
“Kai got hurt at practice.”
My heart lurched.
“How bad?”
“His leg’s bleeding pretty badly.”
I was already running downstairs when Kale stepped from beside the dorm entrance.
He caught my wrist.
“You’re actually with him?”
I ripped free.
“Kale, move.”
“You’re doing this to punish me.”
I stared at him.
“You still think my life revolves around you?”
“Is this about that stupid dinner? Fine. I won’t peel shrimp for Lila anymore.”
For one second, I could only look at him.
Then I understood.
He genuinely believed a plate of shrimp was the problem.
“Kale, I don’t care about the shrimp. I don’t care about Lila. And I don’t care what you do anymore.”
His face lost color.
“Kai is hurt. I’m going to him.”
I ran.
At the gym, Kai sat surrounded by teammates with blood running down his calf. His expression was calm until he saw me.
Then his whole face crumpled.
“It hurts.”
I nearly laughed from relief.
“At least you’re alive.”
He leaned against me dramatically. “Barely.”
“You have a cut.”
“A terrible cut.”
“You are six-foot-three.”
“Tall people feel pain too.”
At the hospital, the doctor stitched the gash while Kai held my hand and pretended he wasn’t watching my face every few seconds.
My phone buzzed.
Another unknown number.
Busy? Apparently not too busy for Kai.
I answered with one sentence.
My life is none of your business.
Block.
By then, Kale’s behavior had stopped being pathetic and started becoming alarming. New numbers appeared after I blocked old ones. He waited outside buildings. He sent long messages insisting I was confused, angry, immature, jealous, anything except finished.
Then Lila asked to meet me.
I almost refused, but curiosity won.
At the coffee shop, the fragile act was gone.
She wore Kale’s bracelet prominently.
“You recognize this?”
“Yes.”
“I told him I liked it, and he gave it to me.”
“Congratulations.”
Her mouth tightened.
“You spent months saving for it, didn’t you?”
So she knew.
I leaned back. “You seem very proud of receiving things somebody else no longer wanted.”
Her face changed.
“You think you won because Kai Bennett likes you?”
“No. I think I won because I stopped competing.”
That landed harder.
Lila grabbed her coffee and threw it toward me. Most of it hit my shoulder and the wall behind me.
People gasped.
I stood but didn’t touch her.
Instead, I looked directly at the security camera over the counter.
“Thank you.”
Her confidence faltered.
“For what?”
“For doing that on video.”
I left.
Then I did something I should have done weeks earlier.
I gathered Lila’s abusive messages, Kale’s endless texts, photographs of him waiting outside my dorm, and the coffee shop incident. I sent Kale evidence of Lila’s behavior.
Then I sent Lila screenshots of Kale’s messages to me.
My final message to her was simple.
Keep him. I don’t want him.
Apparently, chaos followed.
They fought. Accused each other. Broke up. Reconciled. Broke up again.
For the first time in months, neither had enough energy left to bother me.
Life became wonderfully ordinary.
Classes. Friends. Basketball games. Bad cafeteria food. Kai bringing breakfast even when I insisted I could feed myself.
Autumn arrived.
One cold night, as I walked back toward my dorm, a figure stepped from the shadows.
“Scarlett.”
I stopped.
Kale smelled strongly of alcohol.
“Lila and I are finished.”
“Okay.”
He grabbed my hand.
I pulled away.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I was wrong. I’ll change. Just give me another chance.”
“No.”
His eyes reddened.
“Scarlett, three years. You loved me for three years.”
“Yes.”
“How can that disappear?”
“It didn’t disappear. You used it up.”
He looked as if I had struck him.
“You kept spending my love like there would always be more,” I said. “There isn’t.”
“I didn’t know—”
“That’s the problem. You never bothered to know.”
He reached toward me again.
A hand caught his arm.
Kai.
He stepped between us.
I moved immediately to Kai’s side.
Kale looked from him to me and finally seemed to understand something he had resisted for months.
I was not pretending.
I was not waiting.
I was gone.
“This is the last time,” I told him. “Do not follow me. Do not call me. Do not wait outside my dorm. If you do it again, I’m reporting you.”
Kale stared at me for a long moment.
Then he lowered his head.
He walked away alone.
This time, he never came back.
