“Okay, then,” young Mr. Littman said, clapping his hands, “let’s get back to the study guide, since the test will be Friday. I think a team approach would be good. Those who need to study the anatomy of the worm, well, Master Diego Wormfood is right over there in all his annelid glory.”

“Or is that annelidical glory?” one of the guys said.

Mr. Littman actually giggled.

Olivia glanced over to the lab area and noted a foam tray with pins poking out. Something brown lay split upon it.

Gross.

The students pulled out notebooks, and Con leaned over to her. “What’s your name, new girl?”

She turned and cast a worried glance at the teacher, who had started writing with chalk on the board, before looking back at the odd boy who wore torn jeans and a bleach-splashed T-shirt. She rarely talked to boys, so she still felt nervous, but his eyes were intelligent . . . warm . . . interested in her.

“Olivia.”

“Okay, Livy. Be my partner.”

And even though she’d been put off by his brashness, his assuming nature, his hunger to get exactly what he wanted, she had been his partner for the test on the worm. And they had remained the best of friends for all four years of high school. She’d gone to USC, like Neve, and Conrad had gone to a film school in NYC before deciding he liked sunshine and only the idea of wearing a parka. He’d come back to LA in the middle of his sophomore year, no longer thin and boyish. He’d grown into a man, and Olivia had fallen even harder for him. Not that he ever really knew it until that one weekend.

The weekend that had changed everything.

Now he stood, looking expectantly at her, a man who wore the success he’d earned like a crown set upon his brown curls. Beside them, waves rolled onto the beach, the whooshing ebb and flow a reminder of her own life . . . perhaps even Con’s life, too. The sea giveth and it taketh away, the way it had the day she’d found her sister dead.

Conrad’s stare jolted her back to the beach. What had he asked her? She couldn’t remember, but he was staring at her expectantly. “What were we talking about?”

“Chase?”

Olivia ripped her gaze from Conrad and searched the beach. “Well, she’s barefoot and has no phone, so she can’t get too far.”

“Maybe you wish she would. Then you could get on with writing your book and wouldn’t have to see me.”

Hurt tinged his voice, flooding her with guilt. She’d been avoiding seeing him. Surely he knew why. Or maybe he didn’t. Conrad had wonderful traits, but he wasn’t beyond being oblivious. After all, he’d never realized she’d been in love with him for most of her life. “The first part of that isn’t totally untrue, but the fact is, I drove away from Cedar Point with Chase sitting next to me. It wasn’t because she was some kind of challenge. I’ve passed up plenty of hard cases that would test my ability to pull a person from the darkness and give her the possibility of a new life.”