Fine. I’ve never been afraid of a challenge.
Tomorrow I’ll go back to school and be perfect Chloe Bishop, queen of the social hierarchy. I’ll watch him watch Skyla with those pathetic puppy eyes. I’ll see how he lights up when she walks in, even when she’s draped all over Logan like a cheap coat. And I’ll file it all away—every weakness, every moment of longing, every crack in his armor.
Because that’s what Chloe Bishop does. She studies. She learns. She wins.
The girl in the mirror reappears. She looks back at me, and for just a second, I swear she’s different—older, but with the same wedding dress, same tears on her face. This time, the girl is me. But when I blink, she’s gone.
What the hell is going on?
A glimpse of the future, maybe? Or just my imagination showing me what the consequences are if I give up.
Well, that’s not happening.
I pull my journal close. I need to document everything. Every look he gives her, every time he flinches when she touches Logan, every moment of weakness I can exploit.
Tomorrow, I’ll wake up with a plan. Tonight was just a mapping out of the landscape. Gage showed me exactly where his boundaries are, which means now I know exactly how to dismantle them.
The fog presses against my window like it’s trying to tell me something. Maybe it is. Maybe it’s saying that Paragon keeps its secrets, and I’m about to become one of them.
Gage Oliver thinks he doesn’t want me. But he’s wrong. He just doesn’t know it yet.
Maybe that’s what makes me different from other girls. They would give up. They would accept defeat. They would cry into their pillows and move on to easier conquests.
But I’m Chloe Bishop.
And Chloe Bishop doesn’t give up. Not when something this important is at stake.
So Gage walked away tonight. So he chose her ghost over my reality. That doesn’t mean the game is over. It just means I need to change my strategy.
He thinks he loves Skyla? Fine. But love can be complicated. Love can be redirected. And sometimes, when you can’t have someone’s love, you settle for becoming something they can’t live without. One thing is for sure, Gage Oliver will not be able to live without me.
I sit up in bed, dive into my journal, and start stabbing at the page. Not writing out plans this time—but observations. Every little thing I know about Gage Oliver. His habits. His weaknesses. The way he takes his coffee. The route he runs in the mornings. The place he goes when he needs to think.
My pen moves faster as the list grows. The way his jaw clenches when he’s jealous. How he drums his fingers when he’s anxious. The exact shade his eyes turn when he’s aroused—I saw it tonight, just for a second, before he shut it down.
I know him better than he knows himself. I’ve studied him like other girls study for exams. Every mood, every tick of his dick, every vulnerability catalogued and memorized.
The pages fill up quickly. Three, four, five pages of Gage Oliver. My beautiful obsession laid out in ink as blue as his eyes.
Some might call this unhealthy. Stalkerish, even. But they don’t understand what it’s like to need someone the way I need him. Tofeel like your entire existence hinges on making them see you—really see you—just once.
I close the journal and hold it against my chest like a talisman. Somewhere on this island, Gage is probably thinking about Skyla.
Good. Let him pine. Let him suffer. Let him believe she’s his destiny while I become his reality.
Because I know something he doesn’t. Destiny can be rewritten. And I am very good with revisions.
I reach under my mattress and pull out the other things I’ve been collecting—a small box filled with memories. The napkin from the coffee shop where we accidentally met up last month. A button that fell off his jacket at school. A pencil he dropped in the hallway that still has his teeth marks on it from when he chews them during tests.
I add tonight’s addition—a receipt from the pier parking meter with the time stamp from when he arrived. Proof that for thirty-seven minutes this evening, Gage Oliver was mine.
Normal girls would be satisfied with thirty-seven minutes. Normal girls would accept his rejection and move on.
But I’m anything but normal. I’m inevitable.
I lie back down, the box tucked safely away, the journal on my nightstand like a Bible of my devotion. Tomorrow, I’ll see him at school. He’ll avoid me, probably. Feel guilty about tonight. Maybe even tell himself he needs to be more careful around me.
He has no idea how careful he should be.
