LILA'S POV
I was angry.
Very angry.
Not because Ryker had yelled. I could handle shouting. I grew up understanding that volume didn't equal victory.
Not because of the argument itself. Arguments were clean. They had boundaries, points of contention, a beginning, and an end.
But because somehow...
He had made me care enough for it to hurt.
And that annoyed me more than anything.
It was a terrifying, suffocating realization that had kept me awake until the sky turned a bruised purple. The realization that somewhere between the forced smiles, the practiced touches, and the calculated public appearances, the armor I had meticulously built around my heart had cracked.
And Ryker had slipped right through.
The next morning, I sat outside the campus library with Sophie.
Pretending to st
