Episode 1

By the time I reached Silverline Club, Landon's varsity jacket was soaked through to my skin.

Rain slid from the navy shoulders in cold streams. The white NORTHLAKE letters clung to my back, heavy as a confession. Three weeks ago, Landon had kissed rain off my mouth and said, "Keep it, Renee. I like knowing my name gets you home."

Now his name was the only thing getting me past the line.

"Students only tonight," the bouncer said, blocking the door. Music thudded behind him like the world had not ended.

I pushed wet hair out of my eyes. "I go to Northlake."

"Everybody goes to Northlake when QB1 is inside."

QB1. Tonight every girl in line whispered it like a prayer.

My phone buzzed in my hand.

Harper: Renee, please tell me you did not go there.

He just got cleared. He is not himself yet.

Not himself. That was what everyone kept saying. Coach MacKenna. Dale Porter. The athletic department statement. The team doctor I had not been allowed to speak to because I was not family, not an authorized contact, not anyone the hospital had permission to update.

Not himself did not explain why Landon's private phone had been off for twelve days.

Not himself did not explain why the man who used to call me from that phone at 2:17 a.m. had walked into Silverline tonight like he was searching for something he couldn't name.

Someone shoved behind me. I stumbled, one sneaker splashing into a gutter puddle.

"Hey." A broad hand caught my elbow before I hit the curb. "Careful."

I turned and found David Cole blinking at me through the rain, his Tigers hoodie dark at the shoulders, his smile loose and unfocused.

"David," I said, grabbing the chance before it could vanish. "You know me."

His brow furrowed. "Renee, right? Joni's friend? Harper's girl from the paper?"

Close enough. Not the truth. Never the truth.

"I need to get inside."

"You with Joni?"

"I need to see Landon."

At his name, David's expression shifted into caution. "He's in VIP. Dale's trying to keep fans off him."

"I'm not a fan."

I looked at David. "Please."

Maybe he was too drunk to think better of it. Maybe the jacket fooled him. He slung an arm around my shoulders and told the bouncer, "She's with us."

Inside, Silverline was all heat and blue light.

Music slammed into my chest. Screens over the bar looped last Saturday's hit: Landon going down, helmet striking turf, the stadium sound cutting into a terrible gasp. Then the feed changed to him walking through Silverline's side entrance tonight, alive under flashing cameras.

Alive should have been enough.

It wasn't.

The VIP section sat behind a rope and two security guards. Tigers players filled the black leather booths, laughing too loudly and pretending not to watch the quarterback in the corner.

Landon sat apart from them.

My entire body stopped.

He wore a black shirt open at the throat and the silver watch I had once teased him for checking whenever he waited on my text. A faint shadow lingered near his temple. I saw it because I knew every inch of his face.

He looked tired.

He looked bored.

He looked like a stranger.

Dale Porter stood near him, speaking quietly into a phone. Dennis Blake and Craig Morris argued at the end of the booth. A couple of girls hovered near the rope, phones angled for proof they had breathed the same air as Landon Dalton.

Then Landon lifted his head.

For one impossible second, his eyes locked on mine.

My lungs forgot how to work.

There you are, I thought wildly.

His gaze dropped to the jacket.

Then to my face.

Nothing changed.

No heat. No recognition. No private smile he used only when he was trying not to touch me in public.

Just a cool, assessing stare.

I moved before fear could pin me there. "Landon."

Dale stepped in front of me so quickly I almost walked into his suit jacket. "Miss Carter."

Miss Carter. Polite. Careful. A door closing softly in my face.

"I need to talk to him."

"This is not a good time."

"Then tell me when was a good time." My voice shook, but it carried over the bass. "When I called the hospital? When I called you? When his private phone went straight to voicemail for twelve days?"

Dale's eyes flicked, just once, toward Landon. "I understand you're upset."

"Do you?"

"I can't discuss Mr. Dalton's medical situation."

"I'm not asking for his chart." I pushed past him because if I stopped, I would break in front of all of them. "I'm asking him why he won't answer me."

The booth quieted.

Dennis looked up first. "Renee?"

Craig's grin faded. David swayed behind me, suddenly aware he had delivered a lit match into a room full of gasoline.

Landon leaned back against the leather seat, his eyes on me like I was an unexpected reporter with a bad question. "Do I know you?"

The words were not loud. They didn't need to be. Every sound in the club bent around them.

My hand tightened around my phone until the edges bit into my palm. "Don't do that."

His expression didn't move. "I'm asking."

"You know me."

"A lot of people think I know them."

Someone at the rope whispered, "Oh my God."

I felt the first phone rise.

Dale saw it too. "Put that down," he said sharply to the girl filming, but she only lowered it a few inches.

I should have left. Harper would have told me to leave. The version of me who had survived my mother's investor dinners and Julian's polished lies would have left with her spine straight.

But that version of me had not slept in Landon's bed with his hand over her heart.

She had not been loved in secret so thoroughly that losing it in public felt like being skinned alive.

"I'm Renee," I said. "Renee Carter."

Landon's gaze stayed on my face. "Should that mean something to me?"

Dennis muttered, "Dalton, maybe take this outside."

"Why?" Landon asked, still looking at me. "She came to my table."

My table.

Not the back row of the campus theater where he had held my hand under my coat. Not the driver's seat of his car where he had rested his forehead against mine and said he was tired of pretending I was nothing.

Just his table.

I unlocked my wet phone with numb fingers. My gallery opened to the private album Harper had helped me hide.

There were hundreds of proofs. Landon asleep on my lap after film review. Landon wearing my cheap reading glasses. Landon kissing the inside of my wrist in the golden dark of his lake house bedroom.

I could end this in three swipes.

I could lift my phone and make every person in VIP see what he had made me promise to protect: the private face he had trusted me with because I had sworn I would never turn love into evidence unless he asked me to.

My thumb hovered over the album.

Landon watched me with detached impatience.

"Well?" he said.

The word cut worse than any insult.

I locked the screen.

Craig shifted in his seat. "Is this about an interview? Because the paper stuff goes through media relations."

A laugh broke near the rope.

My face burned.

"You told me you loved me," I said.

The laughter stopped.

For the first time, something moved across Landon's expression. Not recognition. Not tenderness. A flicker behind the eyes, gone before I could name it.

Then his mouth hardened.

"I don't say that to fans."

Pain went white and clean through me.

Dennis stood. "Hey. That's enough."

"Sit down," Landon said.

Dennis didn't sit, but he didn't defend me either. How could he? He had seen me near the team. He had not seen Landon love me.

That had been the point.

I had agreed to be kept safe.

I had not understood safe could turn into invisible.

"I'm not a fan," I whispered.

Landon's eyes dropped again to the jacket. His jacket. The one with his number stitched on the sleeve. "Then why are you wearing my name?"

Because you gave it to me.

Because I was cold.

Because you said you liked seeing me in proof no one else understood.

I said none of it.

"Your private phone," I said instead. "Turn it on."

Dale's posture sharpened.

Landon's brows drew together. "My what?"

"The phone in your locker. The one no one else has."

A murmur ran through the booth. Craig looked at Dennis. David muttered, "Private phone?"

Landon's stare cooled another degree. "You keep track of my devices?"

"No. I call the one you gave me."

"I didn't give you anything."

I flinched.

That told me how much of him was gone. Landon Dalton could be arrogant, possessive, cruel when cornered. But he remembered what belonged to him. He remembered every object with a story.

The Call Me vote slip tucked behind my student ID. The mint chocolate wrapper in his glove compartment. The private phone. Me.

"Landon," Dale said quietly, "we should go."

But Landon was still looking at me, and all those watching eyes made his pride rise like armor. I saw the public mask seal over the confused man underneath.

"Let's make this simple," he said. "If we were together and I forgot, then I guess that answers the question."

My throat closed.

"What question?"

His voice was flat enough for strangers, sharp enough for me. "Whether it mattered."

The phone in my hand slipped. I caught it against my chest.

Dennis swore under his breath. "Dalton."

Landon didn't look away. "So if you need to hear it from me, here it is. We're done."

For a second, I honestly thought I had misheard him.

The bass kept pounding. Rain tapped against the dark windows. Someone near the rope made a tiny delighted sound, already imagining the caption.

Delusional girl gets dumped by QB1.

I looked at the man I loved. The man who had once traced my lower lip with his thumb and asked if I knew how hard it was not to tell the whole world.

"You can't break up with a fan," I said.

There it was.

The flicker again.

Small. Buried. Almost pain.

Then gone.

"Then we don't have a problem," he said.

Something inside me went very still. Half the VIP section was watching me drown, and Landon had handed them the water.

I pulled off his jacket.

Cold air hit my wet arms. The club lights turned the soaked fabric nearly black as I folded it once, carefully, because some stupid broken part of me still couldn't throw it at him.

I set it on the table between us.

"You're right," I said. "We don't."

Dale stepped aside. Maybe he saw my face and knew there was nothing left to manage.

I walked out before anyone could stop me.

The rain had softened to a mist by the time I reached the sidewalk. My legs shook so badly I had to brace one hand against the brick wall beside the entrance. Behind me, the club swallowed its own noise, already turning my humiliation into a story.

My phone buzzed again.

I thought it was Harper.

It wasn't.

A memory notification lit the screen, bright against my wet palm.

Three months ago today.

The photo opened before I could breathe.

Landon sat on the edge of my dorm bed, my hand held between both of his. His mouth was pressed to my knuckles. His eyes were lifted to mine, so openly in love that the picture felt obscene now.

Under it, my phone displayed the caption I had typed that night and never posted.

The world doesn't know, but I do.

The screen blurred.

This time, I let the tears fall.

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