Chapter 4
ROXIE
By the time I made it back to the apartment the next evening after my walk, my ponytail was frizzing, my leggings were sticking to my thighs, and I was replaying my run-in with Ledger like it was a crime scene and I was a detective assigned against my will.
Livvi was already in her pajamas, one of Talon’s oversized swim-team shirts swallowing her frame, when I stormed through the apartment door.
She blinked at me from the couch, half buried in a blanket mountain, brown hair in a messy topknot, laptop open on her knees, and a cup of tea on the end table.
“You’re back early,” she said. “And, uh, aggressively.”
I kicked the door shut behind me. “Oh, I’m sorry. Was I supposed to tiptoe in after being emotionally mauled?”
“A riveting opener.” She shut her laptop. “Go on.”
“Ledger.” I dropped my bag on the floor and began pacing. “He just—” I stopped, flailed my hands in the air, and continued. “He exists. Loudly. At me.”
A snort escaped her. “What did he do now?”
“What did he do?” I repeated, incredulous. “Try: accused me—again—of having the emotional range of a potted cactus.”
“To be fair,” Livvi said gently, “you do give off cactus energy sometimes. At least with him.”
“Unbelievable,” I muttered. “He called me someone who ‘would rather fight than communicate.’ Which—okay—fair. But also, rude.”
Livvi’s lips twitched. “Still not hearing the actual problem. This sounds like a typical interaction between you two.”
I flopped into the armchair dramatically. “The problem is that Ledger Hayes assumes he knows everything about me. He acts like I’m some kind of privileged brat with a trust fund I don’t deserve.”
Livvi blinked. “You … do have a trust fund.”
“Yes, but he doesn’t know under what conditions I can use it.”
“He knows you’re from money.”
“Which somehow means he thinks I coast through life! Like I’ve never had to work a day in it. Like I don’t pay my own rent. Like my job is just a fun little hobby while I sip matcha and twirl my hair.”
“You do twirl your hair sometimes,” she said quietly.
“LIVVI.”
She raised her hands. “I’m listening. Continue your villain monologue.”
I threw my head back against the chair. “The level of arrogance, it’s Olympic.”
“Good thing you know an Olympian,” she muttered under her breath, then nearly choked on her own laugh.
I glared. “Talon jokes are strictly forbidden during my rage spirals.”
“Noted.”
I exhaled sharply, pushing my hair out of my face. “And then—then—he said I ‘wouldn’t understand real responsibility.’ Like I just float through the world in a bubble made of designer labels.”
Livvi tilted her head. “Okay, and how much of that is him being a jerk versus you maybe projecting a tiny bit?”
I narrowed my eyes at her.
“I’m just saying.” She gestured her hands around the room like that could explain it. “Ledger doesn’t look at you the way people look at someone they don’t respect.”
I made a face. “He looks at me like someone he wants to throw into a volcano.” I folded my arms and gave a dramatic pout that I knew was childish, but I didn’t care. “I hate him.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do.”
“No,” she said softly, “you just don’t understand each other.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but my brain supplied an image of Ledger earlier tonight, jaw tight, eyes sharp, something simmering under the surface.
For a second, he’d looked almost … human.
And annoyingly—unjustly—good-looking in that sharp, intense way that made it hard to stay properly irritated.
I shook the thought away. “Anyway, I’m done thinking about him.”
Livvi gave me a look that said sure, but mercifully didn’t say it aloud.
But of course, telling myself not to think about Ledger meant my brain immediately pulled up a highlight reel titled The Many Times Ledger Hayes Ruined My Life.
And the opening scene?
Freshman year.
Intro to Statistics. Eight a.m. With Professor Doyle, who graded like she was personally offended by your existence.
I’d walked in early, determined, organized, with highlighters in color order, hair curled, outfit cute but smart. I wanted to make a good impression. Start strong.
Then Ledger Hayes swaggered in.
Wet hair.
Swim team hoodie.
Energy drink in hand.
Smirk locked and loaded.
He took one look at the seating chart, saw I’d been assigned next to him and groaned.
Loudly. Dramatically. As if I were a root canal.
“Wow,” he’d said, dropping into the chair. “This semester’s off to a great start.”
I turned, frostier than Antarctica. “Excuse me?”
He gestured at the space between us. “No offense, but you look like the type to correct people’s grammar on purpose.”
“I do not!”
He raised a brow. “Your color-coded notes and designer clothes say otherwise.”
I slammed my notebook shut. “For your information, I’m a very laid-back person.”
He blinked slowly. “You rewrote your name three times.”
“I was finding the right pen pressure,” I argued.
He’d leaned back in his seat, grin infuriating. “This is going to be fun.”
We’d been rivals ever since. Competing for grades, sniping at each other, arguing over every group project.
He was talented and infuriating.
I was determined and, apparently, intimidating.
We were oil and fire.
And we never mixed.
But after my rant to Livvi and the way Ledger had looked at me—tired, sharp-edged, not his usual cocky self—I couldn’t quite shake the encounter. It lingered, like a splinter under my skin. And I hated that.
I’d run into him on my evening walk near campus, which was becoming a far-too-frequent hazard lately.
Maybe I needed to switch routes. Or times.
Or, ideally, entire states. Something with fewer tall, aggravating swimmers and fewer moments when my stomach did weird, concerning flips.
Anything to stop accidentally crossing paths with the human storm cloud who managed to grate on my nerves without even trying.
That thought only solidified itself when, three days later, I found myself on that same evening walk—earbuds in, trying to decompress, pretending I wasn’t subconsciously scanning for a certain aggravating swimmer—when I cut across the lawn behind the Wilson Center.
The pool lights glowed through the long row of windows. The humid, chlorinated air seeped out each time the side door opened.
That’s when I saw them.
Ledger and Ridge.
Ridge had his hands on his hips. Ledger had his arms crossed, chin down, frustration radiating off him like heat from asphalt.
Their voices carried across the quiet outdoor walkway that wrapped around the building, low but clear enough that I stopped mid-stride before I even realized I had.
I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop.
Okay, maybe I was since I’d paused the music I had been listening to, but whatever.
And I might have stopped walking completely, slightly hiding close to the building behind a bush. I was chalking it up to not wanting to have a repeat encounter with Ledger again, not to caring about what they were talking about.
“—not your fault,” Ridge was saying.
Ledger paced, running both hands through his hair. “Doesn’t matter. I can’t afford the apartment without the housing stipend. And the extended lane access? Gone. How am I supposed to hit qualifying times if I can’t train like I need to?”
My breath caught. Not dramatically. Just a small, surprised inhale that tightened everything inside me.
Because this wasn’t the clipped version I’d overheard at Talon’s apartment, the casual mention of funding issues.
This was more.
Worse.
Real.
The kind of real that didn’t fit with the version of Ledger I’d built up in my head.
He kept going. “I told Coach I’d figure it out, but that was before I saw the numbers. If I move off-campus, rent triples. If I move home, the commute kills my training hours. And my parents don’t have any extra money. I can’t—”
He stopped.
Just stopped.
Like the words physically caught in his throat.
Ridge swore softly. “You’re not alone. We’ll figure it out.”
Ledger shook his head. “You don’t get it. This was my last real shot. I don’t have family money to fall back on. I don’t have a Plan B.”
My stomach twisted.
Because I didn’t know this.
Well, I didn’t know the full extent of it. And hearing it like this felt like being dropped into an entirely different story than the one we’d always lived in.
“I’m so close, Ridge,” he said. “I’ve been training for this my whole life, and everything is falling apart because I don’t have the money to stay here.”
The ache in his voice turned something in my chest over. Ledger never sounded like that.
I’d spent years assuming Ledger lived in some charmed little athlete bubble with coaches praising him, opportunities falling into his lap, and everything coming easy.
But this?
This was pressure. This was fear. This was someone whose entire future was hanging by a thread.
I stepped back, heart thudding.
I’d never seen Ledger look defeated. Frustrated, sure. Annoyed, frequently. Smug, constantly.
But this was something else.
Raw. Unfiltered. Real.
I shouldn’t have heard it.
I definitely shouldn’t have stood there frozen hiding behind a bush like a creeper.
But I couldn’t stop replaying his voice.
“I don’t have family money to fall back on.”
I thought of the trust fund I despised. The one held hostage behind marriage paperwork. The one I’d never touched.
Yes, I hated it, but it existed. It was a safety net. A choice. A cushion.
Ledger had none of that.
“Everything is slipping at once,” he murmured.
A dull ache in my chest hit me unexpectedly. I didn’t want him to lose everything.
Even if he drove me insane.
Even if he acted like I was a walking eye roll.
Even if our history was basically a series of mutual annoyances.
He didn’t deserve this. No one did.
And I’d been completely, embarrassingly wrong about him.
Something inside me pressed upward—an urge I didn’t want, hadn’t asked for, and certainly didn’t authorize.
Sympathy.
Ugh.
I backed up, heart pulling in two different directions.
I didn’t want to feel for him.
Not Ledger.
Not the guy who’d made freshman year a competitive blood sport. Not the guy who still managed to rile me up with one raised eyebrow. Not the guy who clearly didn’t think twice about me unless I was blocking his path.
But he was hurting.
And it wasn’t a small hurt. It was the kind that rearranged someone’s life.
He deserved to be knocked down a peg sometimes, sure, but this wasn’t that.
This was him drowning.
And me, standing on the shore, pretending I didn’t see it.
I forced myself to turn around and keep walking, my steps shaky, my chest tight.
It wasn’t my business. It wasn’t my responsibility.
I barely had control over my own life—rent, a job I was losing patience with, a mother who reminded me weekly that my trust fund was one signature (and one marriage) away.
I didn’t have room to worry about Ledger Hayes.
I didn’t.
But even as I crossed the courtyard and left the Wilson Center behind, his voice followed me—frustrated, exhausted, scared.
And for the first time in the eight years since we’d met, I didn’t want to win our rivalry.
I just wanted him to be okay.