Ryan was a good guy. He always had been. Once he’d finished half the row, he tugged at each finger until the glove slid off my hand. “Thanks,” I said as he handed it back to me. One hand free, I went to work on the other glove myself, even though I could feel his gaze like an actual weight on the curve of my neck.

“We’re done, aren’t we?” he asked. I raised my head, the left glove still half on, half off.

For a second, I thought about pretending I didn’t know what he was talking about. Maybe if I smiled at him and made a joke about the gloves, I could stop this from happening. But did I want to? Was there room for Ryan in my life—short as it might be—now?

I knew there wasn’t.

But even more, I wasn’t sure there had ever been room for Ryan. Not really. Not the way he deserved. Still, I couldn’t make myself say anything.

Ryan wasn’t stupid. He knew what my silence meant. His throat worked, and his eyes were shiny. “Well, we had a good run of it,” he said, broad shoulders shrugging inside his tux jacket. He looked the handsomest I’d ever seen him, like he was meant to wear formal wear every day of his life.

I laughed, but it sounded sad. “You make it sound like we’re getting divorced.”

He laughed, too, dashing at his face with the back of his arm. “Hey, we’ve been together nearly our entire high school lives. That’s, like, twice the length of a lot of marriages.”

Smiling, I reached out and took his hand. “I love you, Ry.”

Sniffing, he nodded toward the house. “I know that. But I’m not an idiot, Harper. There’s someone in there you wanna be with more than you wanna be with me.”

I actually recoiled at that. “W-what are you talking about?”

Ryan rolled his eyes. “Harper, you and David Stark have been circling each other since kindergarten.”

My mouth suddenly felt dry, and I busied myself taking off my glove. “David and I . . . maybe we have ended up being friends after all, and I guess we have some stuff in common—”

“He gets you, Harper. That way you throw yourself into everything you do, he does that, too. And he’s a walking encyclopedia like you, and I bet he doesn’t even play video games—”

“I like War Metal 4,” I insisted, but Ryan shook his head.

“It’s okay, Harper. I actually feel kind of . . . good. You know, doing the noble thing, stepping aside in the face of True Love . . .”

He was trying to joke, but my throat suddenly went tight. If Ryan had any idea what was really going on between me and David, that it was so much more complicated and so much worse.