PROLOGUE
FRESHMAN YEAR OF HIGH SCHOOL
PAIGE
With a shaky hand,I wipe the sweat from my forehead.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” my best friend Baylee Reyes asks as she eyes me from the other side of my small bedroom. “You look like you’re gonna hurl.”
“I’ll never be able to live with myself if I don’t tell him.” I take a few deep breaths to calm down. “You think Amber’s cheating, right?” Baylee has always had a sixth sense about things. “Because if this is all in my head?—”
“I think she’s a ho-bag who’s sleeping around behind his back, yes.”
Um. “Isn’t that slut-shaming? I don’t think you’re supposed to say that.”
Her eyebrow arches. “I can if she’s cheating on Rhett Walker, the most stand-up guy in town.”
That’s the perfect way to describe my brother’s best friend. Rhett is reliable and responsible… not to mention the most handsome man in Wild Heart, Texas. But that’s beside the point.“What do I say? How do I tell him I think she’s sleeping with Kacey Miller?”
Baylee leans toward my mirror and reapplies her lip balm. “Tell him what you told me.”
“What if my words get jumbled like they did when I gave my speech on the plague in history class?”
“Jot down notes this time.”
My shoulders fall. “I had notes for that speech. It didn’t help.”
She smacks her lips together and turns to me. “My mother always tells me not to think about myself. Think about Rhett and how he’s going to ruin his life if he marries that twatwaffle.”
Baylee has a way with words.
Sighing, I pick at my chipped nail polish. Even though I’ve been secretly in love with Rhett for as long as I can remember, I think this would be easier to deal with if I hadn’t seen what I did.
Amber and Rhett are high school sweethearts. Everyone says they’re destined to get married.
And I have exactly two weeks to talk him out of it.
The thought of him being tied to that woman permanently almost makes my breakfast come up.
I’ve known Rhett my whole life. When I was little, he used to carry me on his shoulders and make me crowns from wildflowers. He’d push me in the swings and toss me into the lake. He never minded when I’d tag along with him and my brother. He even sat through my tea parties. Rhett was the one who told me I had a gift for tumbling and encouraged me to pursue gymnastics.
At first, he was just this beautiful boy with big feet and shadows behind his dark eyes, who’d clomp through our house with my older brother Danny.
Rhett was the boy who only ever seemed to smile at me and my brother, which made every laugh I wrung from himmeaningful. I knew his home life was rough. That his mother took off when he was young, leaving him and his four younger brothers. I hated that anyone had caused him pain.
In first grade, our teacher was getting married, and I decided right then and there I was going to marry Rhett Walker someday. It didn’t matter that I was six and he was almost sixteen. He was mine. He just didn’t know it yet.
As I got older, and he started to get girlfriends, it dawned on me I was too young, and nothing I ever did would change that.
But when he met Amber, and I saw how he looked at her, I knew it was over. He was in love with her. It was obvious to the whole town.
Amber’s beautiful. She has thick blonde hair, a great smile, and a perfect body. She was the most popular girl in school, which was fitting because Rhett was the captain of the football team. The only problem is she’s nice to your face and a bitch behind your back, which makes me wonder if Rhett knows the real Amber.
The night I heard they got engaged, I locked myself in the bathroom and cried.
I’d finally come to terms with everything when I saw Amber nearly locking lips with Kacey behind the Shake Shack.
A car door slams outside, and my heart races like I’m sprinting the last leg of a marathon. My brother’s laughter spills across the yard and through my open window.
