And as her fingers find mine, lacing together like they were always meant to, I know one thing with absolute clarity—this time, I’m never letting go.
Epilogue
ELIZABETH
Isigh as I watch Brandon and Tatum, the latest couple in our friends circle, curled up together on the leather chair in Java the Hutt, laughing and flirting as they scroll through the comments on Tate’s latest BookTok post.
“Look at them. So happy. So in love,” Samantha says as she comes up beside me, slurping on her large coffee.
“Must be nice,” I say with longing.
“What are we talking about?” Charlotte maneuvers out from under Chris’s arm to set her chai tea down on the coffee table.
“Hold that thought. I just got off shift,” Avery chimes in, hurrying toward the couch, blonde curls bouncing as she sinks down beside Damon, her Java apron balled in her fist.
She steals a tiny kiss from him before turning back to me. “You were saying?”
“Just how cute Brandon and Tatum are.”
And how completely and irrevocably jealous I am of all my friends.
“They’re probably the cutest thing I’ve ever seen,” Brynn confirms, earning her a scoff from Jace who’s holding her firmly in his lap.
“Cuter than us?” he asks in mock offense.
Brynn pats his chest with a manicured hand. “Course not, babe,” she says, then offers him the sweetest of kisses before turning back to us with a smirk and a roll of her eyes.
I sigh, resting my chin on my hand, my gaze scanning over them. “I’m now officially theonlyone of us without a boyfriend.”
Samantha grunts. “I may be joining you before too long.”
I glance over at her, my gaze softening at the distress in hers. “Is James still being distant?”
“I don’t even know what to think anymore. Maybe this is just what it’s like after you’ve been dating for more than two years.” She shrugs, and I feel a stab of sympathy.
God, I hope not.
“I’m sure things will get better soon,” Avery says, and the girls all agree with her, offering varying forms of reassurance while I sink deeper into my latte foam, pretending I’m not the only single one left in our formerly girl-powered group.
Where did I go wrong? Why does it feel like I’m always the last one standing?
Obviously, I’ve been looking at all the wrong guys. Maybe I should have gone out with Steve from microbio, the guy wholeaves little smiley faces in my lab notebook. Or maybe I should have said yes to that app date with Seth, the guy with all the gray tabby pictures and the obsession with K-dramas. Maybe—
A tiny bell tings above the Java’s entrance, snapping me back to the present and drawing my eye. I blink at the figure standing just inside the café’s entrance, sure I must be imagining things. Certain this is some kind of daydream or nightmare I might wake from.
I rub my eyes but the vision remains. The air turns to ice in my lungs. My skin crawls. Everything inside of me screams to up and run because I know that girl—the one enshrined by the cascade of sunlight shining through the glass door like a spotlight.
Hope Adams.
Here.
In my campus coffee shop.
Merely feet away.
She’s taller than I remember, but that’s the only thing about her that’s changed. Same shiny gold lioness hair, meticulously blown out. Same mean-girl perfect body and confidence so thick it radiates off her in toxic, invisible plumes. Same predatory eyes, scanning the café until they land, with unmistakable and terrifying precision, on me.
“Shit,” I hiss, ducking behind Samantha, like she’ll shield me from Hope’s line of sight.
