Chapter 20
Summer's POV
"Tell me if I hurt you," I whispered.
"You won't."
I wanted to argue, to insist he deserved better than this casual dismissal of his own suffering, but the words stuck in my throat. Instead, I worked in silence—cleaning the wound with careful precision, applying ointment in thin layers like the pharmacist had shown me, unrolling gauze with hands that shook less the more I focused on the task.
His skin was warm under my fingertips, the contrast between smooth unmarked areas and rough scarred tissue making my heart ache. When I accidentally brushed against one of the older scars, his shoulder jerked, just barely, and I froze.
"Sorry—I'm sorry—"
"Keep going." His voice was rough, strained, and when I glanced up his ears were burning red—that telltale sign of embarrassment he couldn't hide no matter how hard he tried. "It's... it's fine."
I finished wrapping the gauze, securing it with medical tape, my fingers lingering maybe a second too long against his wrist. He pulled away immediately, rolling his sleeve down with practiced efficiency, but not before I caught the way his breathing had gone shallow and uneven.
"Thank you," he said, still not looking at me.
I nodded even though he couldn't see it, my own face burning.
The classroom door burst open, shattering the fragile bubble we'd been existing in. A cluster of cheerleaders swept in, voices bright and sharp, and Kieran and I sprang apart like we'd been caught doing something forbidden. I fumbled with the medical supplies, shoving them back into my bag with hands that wouldn't cooperate, while he flipped open his physics book so violently the pages tore slightly at the binding.
He was holding it upside down.
I watched him stare at the inverted formulas for three full seconds before he realized, his ears going from pink to scarlet as he jerked the book right-side up.
I bit my lip to keep from smiling, warmth spreading through my chest. I'd rattled him. I'd gotten under his skin the same way he'd gotten under mine.
---
The morning bell rang. I forced myself to turn toward Mia's desk near the window. She was already there, highlighting notes in her careful way, short hair falling forward to hide her face. When she saw me approaching, she looked up with that quiet smile that never demanded anything—just offered warmth like it was the easiest thing in the world.
"Mia," I said, crouching beside her desk. "Can I borrow your AP Physics notes? I completely bombed the Newton's Second Law section."
Surprise flickered across her face—confusion, maybe, that I was asking instead of demanding like I used to—but she flipped open her binder immediately, pulling out pages covered in neat handwriting and color-coded diagrams.
"Of course! I made force analysis charts for all the practice problems—"
"These are amazing," I breathed, scanning the careful annotations, the little sketches she'd drawn. "Mia, you're a genius. How do you keep everything so organized?"
She ducked her head, embarrassed. "I'm not smart like you and Kieran. I just have to write everything down or I forget."
"That's not true." I pulled a small box from my bag—strawberry cookies I'd baked over the weekend. "Here. Payment for the notes."
"Summer, I can't—these look expensive—"
"They're homemade." I pressed the box into her hands. "And we're friends, right? Friends help each other."
The word hung between us—friends—and I watched something shift in her expression, walls I hadn't realized were there crumbling just a little. Her eyes got shiny, like she might cry, and she clutched the cookie box to her chest.
"Thank you," she whispered. "Really. Thank you."
I squeezed her hand, feeling that warm glow again—the one that came from doing something genuine instead of transactional—and headed back to my seat with her notes tucked under my arm.
Behind me, I could feel Kieran's gaze tracking my movement, heavy and intent. When I glanced over, he was staring at me with that same confused, searching expression from earlier, like he was trying to solve an equation that didn't add up.
Our eyes met. He looked away first, jaw tight, flipping pages with unnecessary force.
I hid my smile in Mia's notes, tracing her careful diagrams, and tried to ignore my heart doing stupid acrobatics.
---
Lunch arrived in a blur of classes and note-taking. Mia and I found a table by the windows, trays loaded with lasagna and turkey sandwiches, plus the mandatory side salad every St. Jude's girl carried like a talisman against weight gain.
I dumped half my lasagna onto her plate before she could protest.
"You're too skinny. Eat."
"But you always said—"
"I was being stupid." The words came out harsher than I meant, sharp with self-loathing for the girl I used to be. "I was starving myself to fit some ridiculous ideal and it was making me miserable. So now I'm eating carbs, and you should too."
Mia stared at me, then at the lasagna, then back at me. "Was it... for Evan?"
His name made my stomach twist. I stabbed at my food, suddenly not hungry. "Yeah. That was a long time ago. I used to starve myself for him. He said he liked girls who were 'delicate,' so I stopped eating anything real. Juice for breakfast, salad for lunch, nothing for dinner. I felt like death and my period disappeared for three months, but hey—at least I fit into a size zero, right?"
"Summer..." Mia's hand found mine across the table. "He's not worth it. You know that? I saw him at the track meet last week. His friends were taking pictures of you, posting them on The Whisper with really gross comments about your body. And he was just standing there. Laughing."
The world tilted sideways.
I knew about the anonymous posts—calling me "thicc" and "curvy in all the wrong places," the speculation about plastic surgery, the cruel Photoshops making me look bigger than I was. In my first life, I'd assumed it was random trolls, strangers with too much time and too little empathy.
The thought that Evan had been there, had witnessed it and done nothing, made bile rise in my throat.
"He said he didn't see who posted them. That he'd told his friends to knock it off."
"He lied." Mia's voice was gentle but firm. "I saw him, Summer. He watched them take the photos. Watched them type on their phones. And he just smiled. Like it was funny."
I set down my fork, hands shaking. Memories flooded back—Evan's dismissive "don't let the haters get to you" text, his suggestion that maybe I should "tone down" my outfits if I didn't want attention, his complete failure to defend me when it mattered most.
"I'm going to break up with him," I said quietly. "I've always meant to."
Mia squeezed my hand. "Good. You deserve so much better."
We ate in silence for a while—the comfortable kind that didn't need filling—and something settled in my chest. A sense of rightness, of pieces clicking into place. This was what friendship was supposed to feel like. Not toxic competition and backhanded compliments, but easy warmth that didn't come with strings attached.
"Hey," Mia said suddenly, eyes widening as she looked past my shoulder. "Isn't that Evan? And Blake?"
I turned, stomach sinking. Sure enough, there they were—Evan leaning against lockers in the hallway outside the Dining Hall, Blake Sutton beside him with that smug, entitled smirk that made my skin crawl. Blake was everything wrong with old money privilege condensed into one person: brown hair slicked back with too much gel, polo shirt with the collar popped, an expression that said he'd never been told "no" in his entire life.
They were looking right at me.
I grabbed my tray. "Let's go."
But it was too late. Blake was already pushing off the lockers, sauntering toward our table with Evan trailing behind, and my heart pounded with a sick mixture of dread and fury.