Begin Again(68)

“Not really,” says Valeria, tossing her hair to the side so she can prop her bag over her shoulder. “Why?”

I face the library doors, a conspiratorial smile stretching across my face. “Consider it booked.”





Chapter Twenty-Three


“The thundersnow didn’t kill us, so you thought you’d freeze us to death to finish the job, huh.”

I halfheartedly swat at Milo’s arm, my gloved hand barely thudding against his giant coat. He’s not wrong, though. It’s brutally cold for late March. I’m surprised the lake isn’t frozen over.

“You volunteered to help,” I remind him.

Milo peers out at the lake, at the thick woods at the edge of it and the towering mountains beyond. It’s a sight every bit as breathtaking as the cold. Glittering frost and still water, woven trees and jagged peaks, a crystal blue sky.

“Did I?” says Milo, shoving his hands deeper into his pockets. “Seems irresponsible of me.”

Just then Milo’s older sister Piper pops her head out of the kayak rental stand. She’s every bit as tall and lanky as her siblings, her dark curls spilling haphazardly out of a frayed beanie. “You said four people, right? Four kayaks?”

“Yes, but—if you could do two single kayaks, and one double,” I tell her.

Piper frowns. “We’ve got plenty of single kayaks. I can pull two more out.”

“Nope, no, one double and two singles would be great,” I say quickly, flashing her a very large and perhaps too aggressive smile.

Piper casts her bemused eyes from me over to Milo. “Gotcha, boss.”

Milo lets out a sigh deep enough to cloud the air in front of us. “At least Piper will tell Mom I loved her after the hypothermia ends us.”

“Thanks again for pulling these strings,” I say, sidestepping his morbid declaration. He can pretend all he wants, but the only reason we’re here this late in the afternoon is because he made us wait until after he got off his Saturday shift. “I didn’t think I’d get this close to re-creating the boat scene in Valeria’s manuscript, but you know what? It works. Like, if you squint.”

Squint hard enough to pretend you’re on a summer sunset ride to steal a bejeweled, enchanted crest from a secret ocean cave when you’re living in a place so cold that your eyebrows are threatening to accumulate ice, that is.

Milo shrugs. “What is having all these siblings lingering around campus for if not to get discounts on our own icy demise?”

Just then my phone rings with Connor’s familiar ringtone. “Quick sec,” I say, walking toward the snowy end of the parking lot.

“Try not to lose a toe,” Milo calls after me.

Connor’s voice is warm but rushed. “Hey, I’ve only got a minute but I saw you called last night. What’s up?”

Maybe it’s the cold or the week I’ve spent working my ass off or the god complex I am somewhat flexing now trying to get Valeria and Shay together, but I feel oddly buoyed. I don’t hesitate.

“I’ve been going to office hours. Pulling my grade up. I told my professor how serious I was about trying to get back on track. She’s trying to help, and I—I feel a lot better. Even if you don’t transfer back, it’s probably not too late for you to turn some of your grades around, too.”

Connor lets out a breathy laugh. “Blue Ridge has grown on you, huh? You really don’t want to come back to Little Fells.”

The hurt is so quiet, so unexpected, that I have to hold the phone from my ear for a moment.

Grown on me. As if this weren’t my parents’ school. As if this weren’t my mother’s school. As if I hadn’t planned to be here for so long that it was practically one of the first conscious thoughts I could remember having—that one day I’d come to Blue Ridge and be a Knight, too.

Does he really think I only transferred because of him? That he’s the only driving force that brought me here, that could compel me to stay?

I’ve been walking up the edge of the parking lot, but this is the thought that stills me: It doesn’t matter what brought me here or what didn’t. Blue Ridge isn’t just a school for me anymore. It’s starting to feel like a home. Not because it grew on me, but because I’ve grown in it.

“No, I’m not coming back,” I say, quiet but firm. “I want to be with you. I’m not coming back, though.”

It doesn’t feel that scary to say because it doesn’t quite feel like a risk. At least not yet. Not before we know what is going to happen next year or where we’ll even be. It’s like Milo said—So you’ll just be long distance. We’ve loved each other for years. It shouldn’t be that hard.

Connor’s quiet for a few moments.

“Okay,” he says.

“Okay?”

“I hear you. I get it.” He eases out a breath. “And who knows? Maybe I’ll get back in, and none of this will even matter.”

I don’t miss the implication behind that. “And if you don’t?”

“Let’s just—say I will, for now. We can cross that bridge if we ever get to it. And hope we don’t.”

“Right.” My voice sounds chipper, too bright against the bright piles of leftover snow. I realize my face is stretched into a smile. The syndicated-talk-show one.