Ellie's POV
The notification glows against my ceiling at 6:47 AM, my phone screen casting blue light across the darkness.
Columbia University Office of Admissions.
I stare at the words for a full minute before my thumb moves to open the email. The letters blur, rearrange, sharpen into a sentence that should change everything.
Dear Ms. Harman, We are pleased to inform you of your acceptance to Columbia University for the upcoming fall semester. Additionally, we are delighted to offer you the full Morrison Scholarship...
I stop reading.
My phone drops to the mattress beside me, screen still glowing with news that should make me cry with relief.
Full scholarship in Columbia. New York City—three thousand miles from California, from this cliff-side mansion, from the three men who have turned my summer into a minefield I navigate with increasingly unsteady feet.
I wait to feel joy, relief, hope. The emotions I'm supposed to experience when dreams become reality.
Instead, numbness spreads through my chest like fog rolling in from the Pacific.
I worked four years toward this moment. I spent freshman year huddled in the back corner of a public library because our apartment was too loud with neighbors fighting through thin walls.
I spent sophomore year teaching myself SAT vocabulary from library books because my parents forgot to pay for the prep course they promised, junior year filling out applications on computers that weren't mine because ours crashed and they were too busy touring to replace it.
I spent senior year revising essays until my eyes burned and my fingers cramped and I couldn't remember if I was writing about who I actually was or who I thought admissions committees wanted me to be.
I did all of it alone. Every deadline, every requirement, every form that asked for a parent signature I had to forge because they were in another state, another country, another world entirely.
I built this future brick by brick with nothing but stubbornness and the desperate belief that somewhere out there existed a life where I wouldn't have to wait for people who were never coming home.
Now that future is suddenly possible. And terrifying in ways I didn't anticipate.
You were always going to leave, whispers a voice in my head. Summer ends, college starts, and you put three thousand miles between yourself and everything that's happened here.
The thought should comfort me. Instead, something in my chest recoils at the idea of leaving in September, and I don't want to examine that reaction too closely.
Don't want to think about gray eyes in the darkness, about hands that trembled against my skin, about the way Zack looked at me last night like I was simultaneously his salvation and his destruction.
Don't want to think about Derek either—his easy warmth, his patient kindness, the way he sat with me on the ice while I panicked and never once made me feel broken for it.
I need to tell someone. I need to hear another voice react to this news, need someone else's joy to remind me that this is good, that Columbia is everything I ever wanted.
Derek will be happy for me. Derek will make this feel like a celebration.
I pull on yesterday's jeans and a wrinkled t-shirt, not bothering with my reflection.
The hallway is quiet at this hour, morning light filtering through the windows in pale gold stripes. My bare feet pad silently across the marble, and I count the doors until I reach Derek's room.
The door is slightly open.
I raise my hand to knock, but voices drift through the crack, and my knuckles freeze an inch from the wood.
I hear a woman's laugh, throaty and intimate. The kind of sound that belongs to tangled sheets and bare skin and moments I have no right to witness.
"You're insatiable, you know that?" Derek's voice, low and teasing, sends something sharp through my sternum. "I have a meeting in an hour."
I should leave. I should turn around and walk away and pretend I never came here, never heard anything, never felt this tightness building behind my ribs.
But my body won't cooperate. My feet stay rooted to the marble while my eyes find the crack in the door, and through it I see everything I shouldn't.
Tangled sheets, bare skin—golden and unfamiliar, curves I don't recognize, Derek's hand tracing down a woman's back with casual intimacy.
"When can I see you again?" The woman's voice is husky with satisfaction like she knows exactly what she wants and how to get it.
Derek laughs, and the sound is nothing like the warmth he shows me. This laugh is different—practiced, noncommittal.
"Whenever the mood strikes, gorgeous." His fingers continue their lazy path down her spine. "You know I don't do schedules."
I back away from the door.
My movements are silent, automatic. The hallway stretches endlessly before me, each step carrying me farther from Derek's room and closer to a truth I should have recognized from the beginning.
You have no claim on him, I remind myself. You kissed once. Shared a few charged moments. He took you skating and bought you ice cream.
That doesn't make you special.
I keep walking, counting my breaths, refusing to name the emotion clawing at my insides because naming it would make it real.
Naming it would mean admitting that I let myself hope for something, let myself believe that Derek McKinney saw me as more than a sad, beautiful girl he could rescue.
I'm halfway to my room when Tyler's voice cuts through the silence.
"Eavesdropping on my brother's conquests?"
I stop walking. My spine goes rigid. Slowly, I turn to find him leaning against the wall, arms crossed over his chest, watching me with those sharp, knowing eyes that miss nothing.
He's dressed for training—athletic shorts, a fitted shirt that stretches across his shoulders, his dark hair still damp from a shower.
The morning light catches the sharp planes of his face, and I hate that I notice, hate that my body still responds to his presence despite everything he's said and done.
"How long have you been standing there?" My voice comes out steadier than I feel.
"Long enough to see your face when you heard that woman laugh." He pushes off the wall, moving toward me. "Long enough to watch you run away like a kicked puppy instead of walking in and claiming what you think is yours."
"I don't think anything is mine."
"Now you lie." He stops in front of me, close enough that I have to tilt my head back to meet his gaze. He is so much like his father. "You thought Derek was different and all those charming smiles were just for you."
"You don't know what I thought."
"You do." His lips curve into that slow smile that makes my stomach clench. "Every girl thinks the same thing when Derek turns his attention on them. They all believe they're special. They all believe they've cracked the code."
"To what, Tyler?" I let the venom drip from my words. "More performance? Is that a family trait, or did you both learn it from your father?"
Anger flickers in his eyes but his smile doesn't waver.
"Careful, sissy." The nickname lands like a slap I'm not supposed to feel. "Jealousy's not a good look on you."
My hands curl into fists at my sides, and all I can think about is how badly I want to wipe that smirk off his face.
"Go to hell, Tyler."
His smile widens. "Make me."
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