Arielle didn’t remember walking home. She didn’t remember the snow, the air, or the people calling her name as she passed. All she remembered was Noah’s voice—raw, unguarded, breaking as he told her the one thing she’d spent years training herself not to believe:
“I’m in love with you.”
Arielle’s breaths came too fast, too thin.
She shoved open the door of her apartment, stepped inside, and leaned her back against it as if the wood alone could hold her together.
Her chest hurt. Her body buzzed. Her luck—her awful, cursed luck—was practically crackling under her skin.
“No,” she whispered to the empty room. “No, no, no.”
Love wasn’t safe. Love wasn’t something she got to keep. Love was a match thrown into a field of gasoline.
And Noah?
Noah was everything she could break.
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She s
