Danny was also one of the few people whose back she had no problem jumping onto and riding. Growing up, she’d gone out with a few boys who’d thought it the height of romance to sweep her off her feet and carry her around, forget about the fact that (one): Catie hated being startled and off-balance, and (two): she’d spent literal years learning to walk on her own two prosthetic feet.

With Danny, it was different. He’d seemed to understand from the first that her prostheses were an indelible and treasured part of her, not attachments to be ignored or seen as lesser. When they raced, she was the one who usually suggested she take them off so she’d be lighter and he could run faster.

“Still a cheater,” he’d said with a grin last summer, hailing back to the very first time she’d joined the family camping trip—after Ísa met and fell for Sailor, one of Danny’s two older brothers.

Danny had been bare chested that summer’s day, all gilded brown skin and sleek muscle as he grinned down at her. Bare feet, board shorts, saltwater-tangled hair, and sand stuck to his calves, he’d struck her as beautiful.

Quickly shaking off that random thought, she’d pointed at him. “You want to win or not?”

“I always want to win, princess.” He’d watched her remove her legs. “That foot’s new, right?”

“Yep. The lab’s testing a new everyday foot and asked if I wanted to be a guinea pig.” Thanks to her mother’s insane wealth, Catie had never had to fight to pay for a prosthesis, a privilege she never forgot and that she did everything in her power to pay forward—including by funding continuing research on low-cost prostheses that could be built from scratch by those on the ground in the developing world.

That day Danny had picked up the foot, examined it. “Has a futuristic look to it. Robotic stuff in there?”

“Microprocessors.” She’d grabbed back her foot. “You can ogle to your tech-geek heart’s content later. It’s race time.”

He’d gone down on one knee, she’d hauled herself onto the smooth warmth of his back, and they’d run to the starting line. Sea winds riffling his hair, he’d been all fluid muscle and strength against her—and when he’d laughed at a comment from his brother Jake, she’d felt the vibration in her bones.

Danny was meant for sunlit beaches and rugby fields, not a stark hospital bed.

After shifting her hand to wrap it around his, she made a call she didn’t want to make—but his family wouldn’t thank her for keeping them in the dark.