Olivia was the goal.

Sometimes I thought about that night and the months afterward, and I hated her. Then I hated myself, for still wanting her. She was pissed at me for making her show her arm—for making her do anything—but my relief at the sight of her smooth, bare arm was like nothing I’d ever felt. Part joy, part memory and part aching possibility. I couldn’t stand the thought of someone else’s hands on her, much less some asshole’s mark of ownership.

But she wouldn’t talk to me voluntarily, and that left me no choice but to corner her, which Anne had unwittingly helped me do. Now Olivia couldn’t just hang up on me or close the door in my face. Now she’d have to listen to me. She’d have to talk. She’d have to tell me to my face why she’d ruined my life and stolen my future….

“What happened between you two?” Anne asked, clicking a button on her key chain to unlock her car doors. She slid into the driver’s seat and I settled in next to her.

“I don’t know. But I’m damn well going to find out.”

New Year’s Eve
Six years ago

“Remind me what we’re doing here again.” I wrapped my arms around Olivia’s waist, watching the party over her shoulder. She smelled like vanilla, and I wanted a taste.

“It’s New Year’s Eve. Stop being so antisocial.”

“Oh, I want to socialize—on a very selective basis. I want to be very, very social with you.” I ducked into the warm space between her neck and her hair and dropped a kiss beneath her ear, where the scent of vanilla was strongest. She shivered and twisted to face me, winding her arms around my neck.

“You just don’t like my friends.”

It wasn’t that I didn’t like them—I didn’t know most of them. “In the three years since I met you, you’ve hardly even mentioned them, and never once introduced me to anyone but Anne. Why would you want to spend New Year’s Eve with people you haven’t seen in years, instead of with me?”

“I am with you.” She kissed me to punctuate her point. “But they’re my best friends.”

“From high school. That was years ago.”

“Some bonds last forever, Cam.”

I was kind of hoping she’d say that.

“Thanks for coming.” She turned to pick up her drink from the corner of an end table. “Even if you do look like you’d rather be skinned alive.”

“Not skinned…” I muttered, as she returned a greeting from some tall, fair-haired guy I didn’t recognize. “But maybe shot.” The last-minute party invitation had derailed my plans for the evening, but I had a backup plan—an empty room, a quiet moment and the small but clear diamond in my pocket. I kept touching it, to make sure it was still there, and every time I thought about it, I got a little queasy and a little high on adrenaline.

I glanced at my watch, and that adrenaline surged again. Half an hour to go…

She would say yes. I wasn’t worried about that. I’d planned and I’d waited, to make sure everything was right. We’d both finished college. Her parents liked me. She was still waiting tables and I was still selling tools, but I had a big interview scheduled, and her prospects were endless. The real jobs would come, and until then, we’d call our tiny apartment cozy and joke that we could make our own warmth when the car’s heater gave out again.

But all that was icing. She’d say yes because she wanted me as badly as I wanted her. I could see that every time she looked at me. I could taste it in every hungry kiss and feel it in every fevered touch. This was right. We were right.

“That’s Kori’s brother, Kristopher,” she said, as the blond guy saluted us with an open beer. “This is his house.”

Had he looked at her a little too long? Smiled a little too much? My arms tightened around her before I realized what I was doing. “Were you two a couple?”

“Kris?” Liv laughed and twisted to whisper into my ear. “You jealous?” She bit lightly on my earlobe.

“Mmm… Should I be?”

“Nah. When I was fifteen, we made out in his basement once, for, like, two minutes. Then Kori found us and threatened to kick the crap out of us both if she ever saw that again.”

“Which one’s Kori?” I asked, looking over her shoulder again when she turned and pressed her back against my chest.

“The one in the corner.”

I followed Liv’s gaze to an athletic woman with white-blond hair, pouring from a bottle of vodka as if she’d started waaay before her last birthday. “I like her already.”

Liv laughed. “Yeah, that’ll last until the first time you piss her off. Noelle, though—you’d like Elle.”

“The brunette? She seems like fun.” She sat surrounded by a crowd, cracking them up with some animated story I couldn’t hear.

“She is. Elle’s supersmart, but she skipped college in favor of travel. I was always kind of jealous of that.” Liv sighed. “She always said she wanted to live life instead of learning about it.”

“But if you’d skipped college, we never would have met,” I pointed out. “Then we’d both be miserable for the rest of our lives, with no idea why.”

Liv laughed. “Another tragedy averted by the lure of a state-school education.”

“What’s up with Anne tonight?” I asked, as the redhead—the only one of Liv’s friends I’d spent any time with—staggered past us with a full plastic cup.