Finding the bench near the back, I plopped down and stretched out my legs, placing the hoodie in my lap and just . . . just sat there. Not the most exciting of all things. I didn’t have to come to the garden. I could’ve met up with Deacon and Luke, but ever since everything had gone down, I’d been their shadow. While I knew they didn’t mind, I also knew I didn’t need to be their third wheel every single evening.

Deacon had been a godsend though.

If it weren’t for him, I’d probably still be curled in a fetal position on my bed, smelling like week-old butt. God, he’d been amazing. He’d let me sit there and shove ranch-drenched fries in my face, then listened when I told him what had happened. Deacon commiserated with me and then he got angry with me, for me.

He’d offered to sneak into Seth’s room at night and shave off his eyebrows, and while there was a part of me that would’ve loved that, I advised him against that idea.

But Deacon didn’t have any answers nor did he understand Seth’s sudden one-eighty, but in a way, he hadn’t seemed all that surprised.

“You’re going to have to fight for that guy,” he’d said.

I’d shaken my head, taken aback by the idea and thoroughly confused. “I don’t think there’s anything to fight for.”

And how could there be? It had been so easy for Seth just to cut off everything with me, without so much as a reason or warning. How could you really care about someone when you could walk away from them that easily?

I’d asked Deacon that, and again, he really didn’t have an answer.

Neither did I.

I loved Seth. I was in love with him. And I hurt so bad that every night, my pillow turned into a tissue, but I wasn’t going to beg Seth. I was feeling pretty pathetic, but that was a hard pass. I had my limit.

Or at least that was what I kept telling myself every time I passed his room or when I thought I saw him on campus. Like yesterday, when I was leaving the garden, I thought I saw him when I stepped out, but when I looked again, no one was there. I had seen him on Tuesday, talking to Luke as they were walking toward the main Council building. I wanted to give chase, to corner him, and demand to know exactly what had happened—what I’d done to initiate this change in him.

Because I had to have done something.