Chapter One
Mila
Present Day
I clenched my fists as Mom pulled into the driveway of our new rental—a squat, forgotten house slouched behind overgrown hedges and broken dreams. The porch sagged under the weight of peeling paint and rust-bitten railings. Weeds clawed through the concrete like the place was trying to swallow itself whole. It looked temporary. Like us.
Blackwood. The name hit with the force of a punch to the ribs. The town I swore I’d never set foot in again. And yet, here I was.
Mom threw the car into park as if she hadn’t just driven us headfirst into a land mine. Her exhale was light, as though she hadn’t ripped the scab off a wound I’d spent a year trying to forget. Another town. Another house. Another mask to wear. But this wasn’t just another pit stop on our escape route. This was the origin story of every broken piece inside me.
Luke King. The name pressed against my skull, relentlessly. I forced it down. The next time I see him, he wouldn’t be the guy I remembered. The one who kissed me as if I was air and he couldn’t breathe without me. I didn’t need to see him again to know that boy was gone, no doubt replaced by someone colder. Crueler. The kind of dangerous that didn’t need weapons because of who he was and who he was connected to. Someone I’d helped create by leaving the way I had. As if I’d taken his trust and thrown it back in his face.
I’d left him without a goodbye. Just one message on a phone I wasn’t supposed to have. I’m leaving. I’m sorry.
He’d called. Texted. Begged. Then raged. Until I went dark. Changed my number. Disappeared. But now, we were back. Walking willingly into the heart of the storm.
“Mila, help me with these boxes.” Mom broke my mental spiral as she popped open the door, stretching as though this was a yoga retreat instead of a return to hell.
I grabbed the nearest box, shoulders stiff. Arguing with her wouldn’t change anything. It never did. Our life was built on burned bridges and fabricated names. She called them reinventions. I called them what they were—lies dressed in fresh coats of paint.
This move wasn’t about reinvention. It was a resurrection.
Supposedly, someone had offered her a job too good to pass up—financial consulting, high-dollar, low-transparency. She swore it was clean. That it had nothing to do with the past, with how she’d worked for King Enterprises back then, or what’d happened. No one had come after us; she said we were good. Said her new job was with King’s competition. But in Blackwood, every job came with strings. And I’d learned the hard way that those strings were often nooses.
The stairs creaked as if they knew we didn’t belong. I walked down the hall and entered my room that was more storage unit than sanctuary—yellowed blinds, warped wood floor, air thick with dust and a ghost of something sour. Probably mildew. Possibly regret.
I dropped my box by the bed and turned to the window—and froze.
Beyond the rusting fence, past cookie-cutter houses trying too hard to be charming, loomed Blackwood Academy. All glass and stone. Cold and perfect. A castle built to keep people like me out. And just past it, the glint of metal and glass caught the light—Blackwood’s prized rink. Luke’s domain.
I knew before we got here that he still ruled it. His name was legend. His scowl immortalized in championship photos and whispered hallway threats. His family’s empire was intact, at least on paper. But the cracks had started a year ago. And now, here I was, a sledgehammer with a fake smile.
Stay invisible. Graduate high school. Get out.
The plan was simple. And impossible.
The scent of cardboard and old pine cleaner filled the hallway as I ventured out of my room. Mom was already unpacking as if this place was a home instead of a strategic hideout. I found her in the kitchen, stacking chipped plates.
Her voice floated in, light and familiar. “We just got here. Thanks for checking in.”
I stepped in as she leaned against the counter, casual and composed. Her eyes flicked to mine—intense and unreadable, too calm for a woman who just reentered enemy territory. She hung up the call.
I scowled, irritated on principle by everything. “Who was that?”
“Just someone from the company. Checking in.”
“Bullshit.”
Her smile didn’t reach her eyes. “Don’t start.”
I took a step forward, tone razor-edged. “Tell me the truth. Did we come back just to run again? Is there a new boyfriend turned potential payload waiting in the wings?” I was tired of it all—the new relationships that inevitably went wrong and resulted in us packing up and hightailing it out of whatever town we’d squatted in.
Her face shuttered. “I told you. This is the last time. You’ll finish school here. Blackwood opens doors—”
“It also opens graves,” I said, low and flat.
She flinched, barely. But I saw it.
Her hand landed on my shoulder with the weight of punctuation. “Have a little faith.”
I stared until she dropped it. Faith had no place here. Not after last time. Because last time, someone died. And Mom acted as though the Kings hadn’t pulled the trigger.
I’d gotten there after it happened. She’d seen more than I had. Then her hand had clamped over my mouth, my body shielded by hers as she got me the hell out of there. We couldn’t be seen. I knew it just as much as she had. She had more information about that night than I did, even though I’d seen enough.
Her hands had trembled when she packed. She flinched at shadows. And she wouldn’t tell me who pulled the trigger, just hinted at who was there. It was enough to buy my silence. This town has a ruling order, and crossing them was detrimental.
I followed her deeper into the kitchen, watching her stack another plate into a cabinet that looked ready to collapse. For the hundredth time, I pushed for the real reason we’d returned. “Why here? Why now?”
Her back stayed to me. “It was time.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the one I have,” she said, her tone clipped enough to make the air feel colder.
Mom was my ride-or-die. The one who could read me without a word and make me laugh even when everything was falling apart.
At least, that was how it used to be.
But ever since she’d gotten word about this job, something had been off. The easy camaraderie, the I’ve-always-got-your-back steadiness vanished. She shut me out, held me at arm’s length.
My chest felt like it’d been hollowed out by her words, and I curled my hands into fists. “We ran for a reason, Mom. Did that just… go away?”
She turned just enough for me to catch the flash of warning in her gaze. “You’ll be fine if you keep your head down. Focus on school. Let me handle the rest.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“It’s all I’m saying.”
I frowned. “Blackwood Academy is expensive. How are we affording it? I thought we blew through our savings.”
“Mila, please.” Her shoulders tensed. “I’ve got it handled.”
My stomach twisted. Memories, dark and blurred at the edges, crept in like smoke. Blood on the ground and sightless eyes. I’d spent the past year burying it all beneath a new school. But trauma didn’t vanish. It waited.
And here, in Blackwood, it waited with teeth.
I didn’t wait around for another excuse. I retreated to my room, dropped onto the mattress, then pulled out my phone, opening the Blackwood Blades page.
My heart skipped a beat, and my stomach flipped. There he was. Luke. Sin wrapped in varsity pride. The kind of guy whose name girls tattooed on their ribs as if it were scripture. The one they warned you about but followed anyway. He hadn’t changed. If anything, the edge was sharper. The jaw more brutal. The confidence? Still weaponized.
Theo. Jax. Chase. Still beside him. As though nothing had ever happened. Like I was never here. Theo’s dirty-blond hair curled just past his ears now, windswept and effortlessly perfect—he always looked like he walked off a magazine cover, and he knew it. Jax stood solid at Luke’s right, dark-brown hair cropped tight on the sides, a little unruly on top. His green eyes scanned the crowd as if he was already looking for a fight to finish. And Chase—Avery’s twin, blond and blue-eyed, broader than I remembered—leaned against a tree as though it owed him something.
I tapped over to Avery’s page. Chase’s sister. My once-friend. We’d been inseparable—until I ghosted her along with everyone else. She’d tried calling. Messaging. She even found my new number somehow. But I cut her out like everyone else, ditched the phone and used a burner from there on out.
Still, part of me hoped she’d remember. That some flicker of that friendship remained. But she’d moved on. Bonfires. Group shots. Homecoming prep. Her smile was bright and whole and surrounded by people who didn’t ask questions.
They had lives. I had silence. I absently touched my neck, missing the comforting weight of the delicate white-gold chain anchored by a single star. My fingers curled around nothing—just skin and the ache of memory.
Luke gave the necklace to me after our night under the stars. It was a symbol of that shooting star we’d seen. Of distant fate. Of hope we didn’t say out loud.
I’d left it for him, thinking he would find it and know what it meant. But we left that night. No goodbyes. No warning. I never got it back. And there was no way he would have kept it. Right?
I tossed the phone onto the bed and sat back, the cheap springs creaking beneath me. My eyes drifted toward the window again, to the shadow of the academy and the glowing lights of the arena just beyond it.
That ice had seen too much. Our first kiss. His first fight over me. The last time we spoke face-to-face. I remembered the sting of his words. The heat of his grip. The way the air fractured between us as though something sacred was breaking.
And now I was back.
The plan was to be invisible. But Luke never let things lie. Not when he felt wronged. Not when the past left scars that still stung.
This time, I wasn’t scared of what he would do to me. I was scared of what we might do to each other.
