"You're staring at your phone again."
Sienna didn't look up from her flashcards. She didn't need to – she had a sixth sense for when I was spiraling and an even sharper one for when the spiral involved a boy.
"I'm not staring. I'm reading."
"You're rereading a text from Rhys for the fourth time. That's not reading. That's forensic analysis."
She wasn't wrong. The text was three words – see you tomorrow – and I'd been trying to decode the emotional temperature of a period versus no period for eleven minutes. This was who I was now. A girl who analyzed punctuation from a boy who was technically almost her stepbrother.
Growth.
The thing about Rhys and me was that everyone on campus knew what we were except us. He walked me to class. Found me after every game, still damp from the ice, an
