Chapter 1
“Seriously, Ella, you’re way too selfless for your own good.”
Tell me something I don’t know, I almost said to Chloe, but it would’ve sounded like I was fishing for compliments, so I just laughed instead.
We were supposed to have dinner after work. Instead, I cancelled. Grace’s friends were coming over for a group study, and I needed to be home to supervise. I told myself I could’ve trusted them alone. Grace is sixteen, not a child. But not quite grown either. And I’ve been sixteen before. I know how quickly “just studying” turns into something else when no one is watching.
Chloe didn’t even let me feel guilty about it. Of course she didn’t. She just showed up at my parents’ house like I hadn’t cancelled on her at all.
Yes, I still live in my parents’ house. But my parents don’t live here anymore.
Because they’re dead.
My father died in a car accident when my youngest sister was only two years old. I was twelve.
I was still a child myself, but something in me crossed a line that day and never really went back. No one told me to grow up. I just did. As the eldest of four, I understood, even then, that my mother couldn’t carry everything alone.
So, I helped – at first, with small things. Then, with everything.
While my mother held the household together, I helped raise my siblings. My younger brother, Alex, was ten. Alice was eight. Grace was only two. I stopped being a child long before I ever admitted it to myself. I was supposed to be out with friends, playing, wasting time the way children are meant to. Instead, I went home after school and looked after my siblings while my mother worked.
Slowly but surely, we learned to live without our father, but then, when I turned eighteen, everything collapsed again. My mother fell ill suddenly. It happened so fast that there was no time to adjust, no time to prepare for what it meant. Just a few days before my nineteenth birthday, she died of cancer.
That was the day I became a mother to my three younger siblings.
So yes, I am selfless. Not because I chose to be, but because I never had the option not to be. It was either them or me, and I love them too much to choose otherwise.
“We’ve been telling her that for ages, but your friend doesn’t listen,” I gasped softly when I heard Alice say as she walked into the kitchen.
I didn’t expect her to be home. My eyebrows pulled together in surprise. More reason to stay home now, I thought. A huge smile spread across my face. “Oh my God, Alice! What are you doing here?” I asked, letting out a small laugh as I went to hug her.
She smiled and stepped into me immediately, holding on a little tighter than I expected. Chloe, still sitting at the counter, got up with a handful of pretzels and came over to hug her too, muttering something about how good it was to see her again.
When Alice turned to me, my breath caught up for a moment.
She looked more and more like our mother every time I saw her. Not just in the shape of her face, but in the quiet confidence she carried without trying. Our mother had been beautiful in a way that people noticed immediately. Alice was the same, only softer around the edges, like time had gentled it instead of fading it.
But it wasn’t just beauty. Alice had brains to match it. She was studying at one of the best universities in the state, and she had gotten in on a full scholarship. She never needed things to be easy. She just made them work for her.
“It’s good to be home,” Alice said softly. Her voice was always gentle, but today there was something weighed down in it… fatigue, maybe, or something close to it. It made my stomach tighten immediately.
I smiled anyway, trying to keep it light. “It’s really good to have you home too, Alice. But what made you come all of a sudden?”
She lived almost a three-hour drive away. Seeing her here on a random Thursday, with no warning at all, didn’t just feel surprising – it felt wrong in a way I couldn’t explain.
Alice pouted slightly and dropped onto one of the stools, letting out a long, tired breath. She looked like something had been sitting on her chest for hours. She picked at a pretzel before speaking. “I’m actually running away,” she muttered.
A chill ran through me.
Chloe and I exchanged a quick look before I frowned. “What do you mean?” My voice came out sharper than I intended. I lowered it. “Alice… are you in some kind of trouble?”
That wasn’t like her. It never was. Alice was the kind of person trouble avoided on purpose. She is too careful, too intelligent, too steady. If Grace was chaos, Alex was calm, and I was responsibility, Alice was control. Trouble never clung to Alice. It usually chased Grace, the one who turned calm days into emergencies without even trying.
But Alice? Alice is one I trusted to keep things together when everything else fell apart.
Alice twisted her mouth slightly. “Kind of,” she admitted.
My panic started to rise, but before I could spiral, she quickly added, “But not the kind of trouble you’re thinking about. Nothing criminal, or creepy, or scary.” She rushed the words out like she needed to fix the picture she’d just painted.
“Boring,” Grace announced.
All three of us turned toward the kitchen entrance. Grace strolled in like she owned the place, grabbed an apple from the counter, took a bite, and immediately turned back toward the hallway.
“Good to see you again, dork,” she said over her shoulder.
Then she was gone.
I rolled my eyes. “Manners!” I called after her.
A distant “Sorry!” floated back, followed by laughter as she disappeared into her room.
Grace is chaos in human form. Always half a problem, always impossible to take seriously for more than a second. And yet, she wasn’t the one I was worried about. Ironically, it was the one who never got into trouble that had me on edge.
“So, what happened?” I asked Alice, turning back to her.
She was still smiling faintly, shaking her head at Grace. At my question, she let out a long sigh. “Well… my professor asked me for this huge favor. And I can’t really say no to him.”
My stomach dropped. “What kind of favor?” I asked, already dreading the answer.
Her eyes widened as it clicked what I was thinking.
“Jesus, no! God, Ella, no. Why do you always – God, no!” she blurted out, completely flustered.
I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding, relief washing over me, while Chloe burst into laughter beside us.
Alice covered her face with both hands. “God, Ella, why do you always have to think the worst?” she groaned.
Her face was already turning red. She blushed easily, even at the slightest embarrassment.
Yes, that’s me. I’ve always been like this… always expecting the worst. Maybe because my mind is constantly trying to prepare me for it, or maybe because, most of the time, that’s exactly what happens. Good things don’t really stick around for me. It’s either something bad or something just… mediocre. So, I wait for the fall-out before it even arrives. I assume something has gone wrong, and I start mentally preparing to fix it, like I always do.
I’m the fixer in this family. And I’m tired. Exhausted, actually. But my brain never is. It stays alert, always one step ahead, always warning me that something is about to go wrong. My happiness has never lasted long enough to feel safe.
I pressed my lips together and gave a small, awkward chuckle. “Sorry,” I muttered. “But it’s not my fault. The way you said it, I thought he was asking for a favor from…”
“Okay, okay. You don’t have to repeat it,” Alice cut in quickly, her face already turning a deep shade of red.
Chloe tittered beside us, clearly enjoying her embarrassment. “Alright, so what kind of trouble are you actually in?”
Alice exhaled slowly. “Well… my professor has asked me to tutor someone.”
I shrugged. “You’ve done tutoring before. What’s different this time?”
“It’s different,” she insisted softly.
“How?” Chloe leaned in.
Alice took a breath like she was bracing herself. “Dr. Wyatt didn’t ask me to tutor just anyone. He asked me to tutor Ashton Archer.”
The reaction was immediate. Chloe gasped. I just stared at her, completely blank.
“And…?” I asked slowly.
Chloe let out a dramatic sigh and hopped off her stool. “Ella, my love,” she said, gesturing at me like I was a lost cause, “and I say this with love, but you are so out of touch. You need to go outside. Watch TV. Open social media. Something. Anything1”
“What does Alice’s situation have to do with me living under a rock?” I asked flatly.
Alice let out a small laugh, still visibly nervous, while Chloe and she exchanged a look as I’d just said something ridiculous. “Well,” Chloe said, grinning, “if you weren’t living under a giant rock, you would know who Ashton Archer is.”
“Ashton Archer is the biggest name in hockey right now,” Chloe said, her voice lifting with excitement she wasn’t even trying to hide. “He plays for Caldwell University, and everyone already knows he’s going to nationals. That’s basically a guarantee at this point.” Alice goes to Caldwell too.
I blinked at her, still not understanding why that name was supposed to mean anything to me. But Chloe was already gone in her own world, grinning as she’d just remembered something scandalous. “Oh my God, I’m telling Davin. He’s going to lose it. Like full-on fangirl meltdown,” she laughed, practically glowing with it as she took her phone out of her bag, already texting her fiancé of two years, Davin.
I ignored Chloe and turned to Alice instead. Taking her hand in mine, I gave it a reassuring squeeze. “Hey, why are you so nervous?” I asked softly. “Shouldn’t you be happy? Your professor clearly thinks you’re good enough to tutor one of the biggest names at your university. You should be proud of yourself. I know I am.”
Alice had always been our nervous one, the one who doubted herself even when she had no reason to. But she always came through in the end. I had no doubt she would handle this too. So, I figured it was just the pressure of the name Ashton Archer, getting to her.
She gave a small, hesitant smile, but her face was still pink.
“It’s not just that,” she muttered.
“What is it then?” I asked.
She didn’t answer. Instead, she looked down, her ears turning even redder, her fingers fidgeting in my hand like she suddenly didn’t know what to do with them.
And just then it clicked.
Alice had a crush on Ashton Archer.
