Chapter 1

The party started right after the spring game, and by ten o'clock Delta House was packed from the porch to the back fence.

Someone killed the music and shouted across the room.

"Heartbeat challenge."

The rules were simple. One guy, one girl, sixty seconds of eye contact. If both heart rates crossed one hundred and fifty, the two of them had to fake date for two months, until homecoming.

The room went up like a fire.

I stood against the wall with a cup of soda I wasn't drinking. I told myself it didn't matter who I got.

It mattered.

The first name out of the hat was Chloe Aldrin.

The second was mine.

People shoved us into the middle of the floor. Somebody strapped a smartwatch onto each of our wrists and set the timer.

Chloe Aldrin, Riverton's star cheerleader, stood two feet in front of me with her ponytail still damp from the game.

I could not look at her.

I looked at her.

My watch climbed. One hundred and twenty. One forty. One sixty-four.

Hers stayed at seventy-eight.

The whole time she watched me the way you watch a stranger waiting for a bus. Calm. Level. Somewhere else.

The timer buzzed. The room exploded.

Chloe took off her watch without a word and handed it to the crowd, like a lab result.

"Julian, your heart's doing cardio for the first time tonight." A guy near the keg had his phone pointed at my face. "He really thought the cheerleader was gonna melt for him."

"Chloe dates the quarterback," another one said, laughing. "Not the guy who can eat the whole team."

I said nothing.

None of them knew that Chloe and I had been together for three years.

None of them knew that I had picked tonight to make it public. I had been planning it for a week. She had promised me she would.

"After finals," she'd said. "I'll tell everyone. I promise."

Somebody in the crowd called her name.

"Chloe, what about Julian? He's clearly obsessed with you."

Chloe glanced at me.

A glance. Half a second. No more.

"Julian is just my childhood friend," she said. "He's not my type."

Just my childhood friend. Not my type.

One sentence, and three years were gone.

The guy next to me laughed so hard he spilled his beer.

I stood there and let the room move around me.

Then somebody dragged a second name out of the hat.

The second round started. Chloe was paired with Mark Montgomery.

Mark was the star quarterback of the team and, until that year, the closest thing Riverton had to a god.

He and Chloe were famous for hating each other.

The crowd hooted.

The timer started.

Mark's heart rate hit one hundred and eighty. Chloe's hit one hundred and eighty-three.

Delta House went insane.

"We got winners!" somebody screamed. "You two fake date for two months. Two months!"

"Fake date!" the room chanted. "Fake date!"

Mark spread his hands. "What? This is stupid."

"Stupid," Chloe agreed. "Completely stupid."

But everyone pushed them together, shoulder to shoulder, until they were standing close enough to touch. In the end they agreed.

My phone buzzed in my pocket.

[J, it's just two months. We'll end it before homecoming. I can't lose to Mark. You know I only love you.]

I stared at the screen for a second.

Then I typed back.

[okay. enough.]

Across the room, Mark was already arguing again.

"We've barely been dating for one night. It's fake."

"Two months," Chloe said. "Then we're done."

The cheers got louder.

Somebody near the door laughed and pointed at me.

"So what about Julian? He looked like he was about to faint when he got paired with Chloe."