Chapter 1 - ZACH
Most mornings in the Carter house started the same way: with silence. Not the good kind — not the kind you could stretch out in, lazy and warm — but the heavy kind. The kind that made every sound stand out too sharp.
The kettle whistling. The clatter of a spoon against a mug. My dad coughing in the next room before work.
I leaned against the counter, chewing on dry cereal straight from the box, staring at the fridge door like it had answers. It didn’t. Just the same faded magnets, the same cracked photo of Mum and me when I was little, grinning at the beach like we had forever.
She’d been gone almost ten years now. Cancer. Eight-year-old me hadn’t understood much beyond the fact that one day she was there — soft voice, warm hugs, the smell of jasmine perfume on her clothes — and the next she wasn’t.
Dad never talked about her. Didn’t need to. She was everywhere in the house anyway. Her handwriting on the old recipe cards shoved in a drawer. A scarf hanging on the coat rack no one touched. That photo on the fridge, curling at the edges.
People at school thought they knew me — the guy who scored goals, who cracked jokes, who winked at girls across the cafeteria like it was second nature. They didn’t know this part. I made sure of it.
No one came over. Ever.
And that was the point. I never let anyone close enough to see more.
Except… I wanted to. With her.
I caught myself thinking about Isla Rivers too often these days. About the way her laugh softened the edges of everything, the way she never tried to be anyone but herself. She didn’t know this version of me — the quiet kitchen, the photo on the fridge, the cereal that tasted like cardboard.
Part of me wanted to keep it that way. To protect what little I had left.
But another part — the part that kicked up every time she smiled at me — wanted her to see it all. To see me.
I finished the cereal, dumped the bowl in the sink, and grabbed my bag. The silence followed me to the door, pressing at my shoulders.
The engine coughed to life beneath me, the old car shuddering like it always did before settling into a steady hum. It wasn’t much to look at — paint chipped, radio half-broken — but it was mine. Freedom on four wheels.
And this year, it meant even more.
I pulled out of the driveway, the streets still quiet in the early morning, and let my mind drift where it always seemed to lately. Isla.
The summer had been… different. For once, I wasn’t chasing someone who was only halfway interested, or putting on some show just to keep their attention. Isla had been there. Fully. She’d laughed with me, let me drive her out to nowhere just so we could talk under the stars, teased me when I got too cocky, and texted me back when I didn’t think she would.
It hadn’t been a fling, no matter what people probably assumed. It was slower, steadier. Real.
I glanced at my phone on the passenger seat, screen dark but still pulling at me. We’d been texting late last night — little things, nothing heavy. A joke about our math teacher, a smiley face, her telling me to get some sleep. But I’d fallen asleep with the phone still in my hand, grinning like an idiot.
And now, with Caleb gone off to college, it was just the two of us at Riverside.
No stepbrother looming in the background. No protective glares thrown across the cafeteria. No one standing between me and the girl I wanted.
I tightened my grip on the wheel, the corner of my mouth tipping into a smile.
This year was going to be different. Better.
Because for once, I wasn’t starting a season thinking about the game.
I was thinking about her.
Riverside High looked the same as it always had — the brick walls that baked in the late-summer heat, the banners peeling at the edges, the parking lot already crammed with cars that hadn’t aged any better than mine.
But for me, it felt different.
For the first time, I wasn’t the second shadow in the lineup. Caleb Rivers had graduated, moved on to college, and left me holding the captain’s band. My team now. My field.
The thought sent a sharp thrill through me as I crossed the lot, slinging my bag higher on my shoulder. A couple of the younger guys called out when they spotted me, their voices half-respect, half-relief. Captain Carter. The one running drills now. The one they had to follow.
I gave them a nod — casual, confident — the way Caleb used to, though I told myself I wasn’t copying him. This was my year.
Still, I could already feel the weight of it pressing in. Wins mattered more now. My grades mattered more. Scouts would be watching. And if I screwed it up…
I pushed the thought away before it could stick.
Because Isla was already somewhere inside this building, waiting to smile at me like I was worth all of it.
I pulled open the glass doors, the hallway noise washing over me — lockers slamming, someone yelling about summer homework, laughter bouncing off the walls. The same chaos as every first day back.
Only now, I wasn’t drifting through it. I had someone to look for.
And even as a couple of guys clapped me on the shoulder, asking about practice schedules, my eyes were already scanning the crowd for dark hair, that easy laugh, the curve of a smile I hadn’t gotten out of my head all summer.
Isla Rivers.
My chest tightened with something sharp and restless.
Because this year, she wasn’t Caleb’s shadow either.
She was mine.
The hallway buzzed with bodies moving in every direction, and I let the guys talk practice while I kept scanning, every nerve on edge. I knew I’d see her soon. I’d been waiting for it all summer.
And then—there she was.
I almost didn’t recognize her at first.
Isla stepped out of the crowd like she wasn’t even trying, her dark hair shorter now, grazing her shoulders in a cut that made her look older, sharper, somehow even more herself. My stomach dropped.
I’d spent the last two months replaying her in my head exactly the way she’d been in June. And now she’d gone and changed the picture entirely.
She looked—God, she looked beautiful.
The kind of beautiful that made my chest tight, like I’d just sprinted laps without warming up.
Her eyes caught mine across the hall, quick, almost startled, and then she smiled. Just a little. Just enough.
The noise around me blurred. The guys, the lockers, the scrape of sneakers on tile — all of it fell away until it was just her, walking toward me like the summer hadn’t ended, like she hadn’t just knocked the air out of me without even trying.
