Chapters (44)
- Cover
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Books by Julie Murphy
- Back Ad
- About the Publisher
“We can dance for the whole song. I don’t want you to have to give up your spotlight.”
I shake my head. “No way. This is too perfect. You have to tell her now.”
We stop right in front of Clementine, who’s beaming with pride, her hands clenched together. I take her hand and join it with Hannah’s. “Go. Dance,” I say to my sister.
Clementine’s blue eyes sparkle, and she kisses my cheek before taking the floor with Hannah, neither of them really leading and neither of them really following.
I stand near Alex and Kyle, watching them dance, the two of their foreheads pressed together, and I hope this moment is as perfect as Hannah dreamed it would be.
The DJ lets this song play out and then leads us right into another Abba classic, “The Winner Takes It All.”
Someone taps my shoulder.
I turn as everyone around me works their way back onto the dance floor, until everyone around me is slow dancing.
“Tucker,” I say breathlessly. “What are you doing here?”
His hair is messy and pushed to the side, like he’d been running his hands through it, and he’s dressed like a cowboy going to church in a dark-charcoal three-piece suit with a bolo tie and well-loved but freshly shined camel-brown cowboy boots. “It’s prom,” he says, like even he’s a little bit lost in the magic of it all. “I couldn’t miss seeing you get crowned.”
“You left,” I say, frantically searching his face for any kind of answer. “You left with Melissa.”
He slowly shakes his head, lines forming between his furrowed dark brows. “She asked me to take her home. I had to tell her. I couldn’t let her think we were here . . . together, and that I wasn’t thinking about someone else the whole time.”
“You were thinking about someone else?” I ask, hope brimming inside of me.
He nods. “Constantly. Waylon, I was an idiot. I felt like I owed something to Melissa after we’d promised to go to prom. I was wrong for thinking it wouldn’t be a big deal to you. I was wrong for not just telling you that I like you. A lot. I just—you’re going places. And I might be stuck here, taking care of my dad.”