I TOOK HIS MONEY AND STOLE HIS HEART

CHAPTER ONE:THE PILE

Mia Carter had a system for counting money, and it went like this: rent, groceries, textbooks, and then — if anything was left, which it usually wasn't — her.

She was doing exactly that math, sitting cross-legged on her narrow dorm bed with a calculator app open on a phone with a cracked screen, when the door banged open and Bella Hayes walked in carrying a box the approximate weight and dignity of a small casket.

"I cannot," Bella announced, dropping it onto her own bed, "believe the audacity of some men."

Mia didn't look up. "What did he do?"

"He sent me a bag. Do you understand? A five-thousand-dollar bag. As an apology. For standing me up." Bella flopped down beside the box like it had personally wounded her. "As if a bag could make up for sitting alone at Le Bernardin for forty-five minutes while the entire restaurant watched me check my phone."

"Which bag?"

"Does it matter?"

"It matters enormously," Mia said, finally setting the calculator down.

Bella cracked the box open with the enthusiasm of someone defusing a bomb. Inside, wrapped in tissue so fine it looked edible, sat a structured leather tote in a shade of green Mia would later learn was called bottle and would sell, four days from now, for eleven hundred dollars.

"It's hideous," Bella declared, holding it at arm's length. "I'm going to throw it out."

Something in Mia's chest — the part that had once watched her mother recount the same twenty dollar bill four times before deciding what it could and couldn't buy — sat up very straight.

"Don't."

Bella blinked at her. "Don't what?"

"Throw it out." Mia swung her legs off the bed. "Give it to me instead."