Rule No 1: No Strings Attached

Summer's Pov

"Taylor, would you make me the happiest man alive, and marry me?" Brooks said while on his knees.

I watched Taylor press her fingers to her lips, and then she extended her hand and Brooks slid the ring on. I had held that ring. And I had thought - even for just a second - about what it would feel like on my own finger. Now I stood there and watched it happen to someone else, and something in my chest folded in on itself.

The room erupted. Applause, cheering. Brooks pulled Taylor in and kissed her in the middle of all those candles and flowers while everyone watched and celebrated something that was quietly breaking me apart from the inside. I smiled. I don't know how. My face just did it on its own, some old, well-trained reflex that knew how to perform even when the rest of me had stopped working.

I still had the letter in my hand.

I hadn't realized I'd been gripping it the whole time. My knuckles were pale around the folded paper, the edges crumpled from how tight I was holding on. Three pages of everything I'd spent three years not saying, tucked into my bag earlier. I felt absurd now, holding it, like I was standing at my own funeral holding a speech no one would ever hear.

I watched Taylor show the ring to the woman beside her, tilting her hand so the diamond caught the light.

That should be me in her place.

*Keep it together. Just keep it together.*

I stood at the edge of the room and watched all of it, because if I moved, something would break, and I didn't trust myself to know what shape the pieces would land in.

Someone nearby laughed at something and the sound scraped against me wrong, and I felt my eyes sting, hot and sudden, and that was when I knew I had to leave. My throat had gone so tight it physically hurt to swallow.

I moved toward the exit, keeping close to the wall, not looking at anyone. I just needed air and distance and somewhere I could fall apart without an audience.

I almost made it.

My foot caught on a cable running along the floor that was part of the setup keeping the romantic lights alive. I lurched forward, grabbed at the nearest surface, found nothing, and then everything happened at once.

The music stopped, and the neon lights died.

The room dropped into a sharp, jarring quiet, and I was standing in the middle of it with one hand braced against a stranger's table and the cable pulled loose from the wall behind me, my heart slamming so hard I could feel it in my ears.

Every person in that diner turned to look.

I was suddenly visible in a way I had never wanted to be, every ounce of the invisibility I'd built over three years of standing quietly at the edges of Brooks's life stripped away in one humiliating second.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I tripped, I'm so sorry..."

Someone near the bar laughed. A murmur rolled through the room, and heat crawled up my neck and into my face, so fierce it felt like a physical burn.

"Summer?" Brooks's called. He was already moving, stepping around the people between us, his brow pulled together, Taylor's hand dropping from his as he came toward me. "Where are you going?" Brooks asked, looking up in surprise. "You just arrived."

"I just remembered I left a textbook locked in the athletic department office," I stammered, pulling my purse strap over my shoulder, the lie coming out shakier than I wanted it to. "The building closes in fifteen minutes, and I...I absolutely need it for my eight-a.m. lecture tomorrow. I'm so sorry to run out on you guys."

"Let me walk you out to your car at least.." Brooks said, thrown by the sudden exit.

"No!" I blurted, a little too loudly. Taylor's eyes flashed. I softened my tone and took a step back. "No, really, stay. Eat. You guys just got reunited, don't let me ruin it. I'll text you tomorrow, Brooks. Welcome back. And congratulations. To both of you." I forced a smile, and it cost me more than I had left to give.

Before he could protest, I spun on my heel and marched toward the exit.

"I'm sorry," I apologized once more. I didn't wait for Brooks, and walked out as fast as I could without breaking into a run, my vision already starting to blur at the edges.

*I can't let him see me like this. I'm such a fool.*

The cold hit me the moment I stepped outside. I made it to the bottom of the steps and kept walking, not knowing where I was going, just needing to be gone. The letter was still in my hand. I didn't even know why I was still holding it. Every step felt heavier than the last, like my whole body had finally caught up to what my mind hadn't let itself understand yet.

*I feel completely invisible. Why can't anyone choose me? I hate myself*

"Summer."

Taylor stood at the top of the diner steps, still wearing that ring. She came down slowly and stopped a few feet away, looking me over. "Jealousy really isn't a good look," she said pleasantly. "Just so you know."

"I tripped. It was an accident." *Why can't she just leave me alone, let me cry in peace?*

*Not here, Summer. Not now.* I held back the tears building up, my whole throat aching with the effort.

"You tripped and killed the lights and the music, right as he kissed me." She tilted her head. "Sure, Summer."

"I'm sorry for interrupting the moment..."

"Stop apologizing." She said it like the apology itself was the problem. "You've spent your whole life apologizing and look where it's gotten you. Still watching from the edges."

I said nothing. There wasn't anything I could say that wouldn't confirm exactly what she already knew.

"I've known about how you feel about him for a while now." Something in her expression shifted. "Did you think you were subtle? Always available, always there whenever he calls. It was almost sweet. In a sad kind of way."

"I'm not sorry," she continued. "He was never going to choose you, Summer. You were always going to be exactly what you are to him - the friend. The safe place. The girl he calls when things fall apart." A small, perfectly placed pause. "Not the girl he puts a ring on."

Each word landed with accuracy, finding some soft, unguarded place in me and settling in like it meant to stay.

"You were never going to be enough for someone like Brooks."

Those words dawned on me. I had to swallow hard to stop the tears from coming out. I would never be enough for anyone.

She turned and walked back up the steps and into the warm light of the diner without looking back, leaving me standing there with three years of silence finally breaking open in the worst possible place, at the worst possible time, in front of the one person who would enjoy it most.

I stood on the pavement and didn't move.

Then the first tear ran down, and I pressed my hand over my mouth, and I walked, because if I stopped moving I was afraid I'd simply fold in on myself right there on the sidewalk and never get back up.

My vision blurred and I blinked hard against it, my heels catching on the uneven ground, the letter still crumpled in my fist, three years of hope reduced to something I no longer knew what to do with.

I didn't see him.

I walked straight into something solid, and the impact knocked me back hard enough that the ground came up before I could do anything about it. I hit the pavement. The letter flew from my hand and spun away into the dark.

A figure crouched in front of me, picked it up from where it had landed, and stood back up. He turned it over once in his hand. Then he unfolded it.

"Don't ..." I scrambled to my feet, my knees stinging, my whole body raw and exposed in a way that had nothing to do with the fall. "That's mine, give it back ..."

He tilted the paper toward the nearest light and started reading without so much as glancing at me.

I knew who he was before I fully saw his face. There was only one person on this campus who moved like that.... Ace Hunters. Brooks's half brother. Boxing champion. The person I had successfully avoided crossing paths with for years.

"Ace." I stepped toward him, my voice cracking. "Give me the letter."

He held it slightly to the side without looking up.

I stood there in the cold, humiliated and tearstained, watching a man I barely knew go through the most private thing I had ever written, every word of it something I hadn't even been able to say out loud to the person it was meant for.

He reached the middle of the second page and stopped, and looked up at me with one brow raised.

"Three years. You've been in love with my brother for three years and never said a word?,."

"Give me the letter." My whole face was burning now, humiliation stacking on top of grief until I couldn't tell where one ended and the other began.

"That's embarrassing." he said it simply. "A one-sided thing for three years while he was taken. And you wrote it all down."

Something snapped.

I crossed the distance between us, grabbed the letter with both hands and wrenched it from his grip, and slapped him hard across the face.