PROLOGUE + Chapter 1

Leave me alone!” she said, trying to get around me and through the door. I

grabbed her by the arms and forced her to look at me.

“You want to tell me what the hell’s going on with you?” I asked,

furious.

She looked back, and I could see her eyes were hiding something dark,

yet she smiled at me joylessly.

“This is your world, Nicholas,” she replied calmly. “I’m living your life,

hanging out with your friends, and feeling like I don’t have a care in the

world. That’s how you are, and that’s how I’m supposed to be, too,” she

said and stepped back, pulling away from me.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

“You’re out of control,” I hissed at her. I didn’t like who the girl I was in

love with was turning into. But when I thought about it, what she was doing

and how she was doing it were the same things I had done before I met her.

I was the one who got her into all this. It was my fault. It was my fault she

was destroying herself.

In a way, we’d switched roles. She had shown up and dragged me out of

The black hole I’d fallen into, but in doing so, she’d wound up taking my place.

Chapter 1 Noah

While I rolled the window of my mother’s car up and down, I couldn’t stop

thinking what the next hellish year had in store for me. I couldn’t stop

asking myself how we’d ended up like this, leaving our home to cross the

country on our way to California. Three months had passed since I’d gotten

the terrible news that would change my life forever, the same news that

would make me want to cry at night, that would make me rant and rave like

I was eleven instead of seventeen.

But what could I do? I wasn’t an adult. I had eleven months, three

weeks, and two days to go before I turned eighteen and could go away to

college, far away from a mother who only thought about herself, far from

these strangers I’d end up living with, because from now on I would have to

share my life with two people I knew nothing about—two men, to make

matters worse.

“Can you stop doing that? You’re getting on my nerves,” my mother said

as she put the keys in the ignition and started the car.

“Lots of things you do get on my nerves, and I have to put up and shut

up,” I hissed back. The loud sigh I heard in reply was so routine, it didn’t

even surprise me.

How could she make me do this? Didn’t she even care about my

feelings? Of course I do, she’d told me as we were leaving my beloved hometown. Six years had passed since my parents split—and nothing about

their divorce had been conventional, let alone amicable. It had been

incredibly traumatic, but in the end, I’d gotten over it…or, at least, I was

trying to.

It was hard for me to adapt to change; I was terrified of strangers. I’m

not timid, but I’m reserved about my private life, and having to share

twenty-four hours of every day with two people I barely knew made me so

anxious, I wanted to get out of the car and throw up.

“I still can’t understand why you won’t let me stay,” I said, trying to

convince her one last time. “I’m not a little girl. I know how to take care of

myself. Plus, I’ll be in college next year, and I’ll be living on my own in

another country then. It’s basically the same thing,” I argued, trying to get

her to see the light and knowing that everything I was saying was true.

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