Chapter 1: I’ve got you
The basement air was thick enough to chew. It tasted like stale beer and sweat, with a sour undercurrent of spilled vodka that had long since soaked into the concrete floor. Bella Rhodes pushed through a knot of shouting frat brothers, the bass from the boomboxo thumping against her ribs like a second, anxious heartbeat.
She needed air. Or a bathroom. Mostly, she needed a minute away from the desperate energy of the party, from the way her eyes kept trailing Caleb Ashfield like a homing beacon.
The bathroom line snaked down the hallway. She leaned against the wall, scrolling through her phone without seeing it. Four years. Four years of his smile feeling like the sun breaking through clouds, of his texts—usually sent after midnight—making her heart stutter. She knew the pattern. She could write a thesis on the Caleb Ashfield Cycle: intense attention, slow fade, disappearance, reappearance with a casual “Hey you, miss me?” It was pathetic.
But knowing it and stopping it were two different things.
When she finally got back downstairs, the crowd had shifted. Her gaze went straight to the sagging leather couch under the faded Tigers vs. Sharks poster.
Caleb was there. Of course he was. But a girl with glossy black hair was nestled into his side, her palm flat against his chest, her head tilted back in a laugh that swallowed the thrumming music. Caleb was looking down at her, a familiar, lazy smirk on his face—the one Bella knew meant he was fully, pleasantly engaged.
The world didn’t shatter. It just went very, very quiet inside her head. A cold clarity settled in her stomach, sharper than any drink.
She turned and walked away, her feet carrying her past the hissing keg, up the stairs, and out the sliding door into the cool night.
The backyard was a chaotic mess of plastic cups and shouted conversations. She wrapped her arms around herself, staring at the dark, glimmering surface of the kidney-shaped pool.
Footsteps crunched on the patio stones behind her.
“Babe. Hey. It was nothing.”
Caleb’s voice, all easy charm. She didn’t turn.
A few people nearby stopped talking, their attention hooking onto the scene.
“Nothing. Really, Caleb?” Her own voice sounded strange to her—steady, low, laced with a fatigue so deep it bone.
“She’s a friend. Get over it.” His tone shifted, the charm thinning into impatience. The audience made him bristle; he was used to being the star, not the subject of a drama.
He moved to put a hand on her shoulder. She flinched away. The movement was small, but it was a fracture.
“Don’t,” she said.
He stared at her for a second, his brown eyes hardening. This wasn’t following the script. Bella was supposed to be upset, then mollified. She was supposed to understand. Her defiance was an inconvenience.
“Whatever. Cool off out here.” He shrugged, the gesture exaggerated for the watching crowd. “I’m not doing this.”
He turned and walked back inside, letting the sliding door slam shut behind him. A few people snickered. Someone mumbled, “Damn.”
The heat of humiliation flooded her cheeks, burning away the cold clarity. She spun, wanting to be anywhere else, wanting to melt into the ground.
Her heel caught on a warped patio tile.
Time elongated. Her arms windmilled, a cup flew from a nearby table, and then the night sky and the glaring backyard lights swapped places. The world upended with a shocking, violent rush.
The water was a cold fist. It punched the air from her lungs, soaked through her clothes, tangled her hair. She plunged deep, the party sounds morphing into a distorted, bubbling roar.
Her dress billowed around her, a weight dragging her deeper. She kicked, but her heels were anchors. The surface glittered above, a shimmering sheet of light that seemed to retreat every time she reached for it. Her lungs burned. The music was a dull, warped heartbeat.
Joseph heard the splash and sipped his beer. He was leaning against the fence, a deliberate space between himself and the chaos. The crowd’s energy shifted, a sudden surge toward the pool. Phones lifted, screens casting ghostly blue light on eager faces. Laughter, but of a different kind—sharp, anticipatory.
He turned to look.
Everyone crowded around the pool, filming. He set his bottle down on the fence post. The liquid inside sloshed, golden and untouched. He walked over, his movements calm, cutting through the ring of spectators. He saw a figure under the water, struggling, a pale swirl of fabric and dark hair.
Then he saw her face. Bella.
He stripped off his jacket, a simple, worn leather thing, and let it fall to the wet concrete. He didn’t pause. He dove in.
The water was a shocking slap of cold and chlorine. The noise of the party vanished, replaced by the frantic churn of his own movement. His arm wrapped around her leg, the other around her back, locking her against him. He lifted her up, kicking hard toward the edge, her hair streaming across his face.
Everyone watched. Silent now. No one offered a hand.
He heaved her onto the concrete, water pouring from them both. She rolled onto her side, coughing, gasping, spitting pool water onto the patio. Her body shuddered with each ragged breath.
Joseph grabbed his dry jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders, pulling the material tight. It swamped her. Her lips were tinged blue. “You’re okay,” he said, his voice low, meant only for her. “I’ve got you.”
He bent down, slid one arm under her knees, the other behind her back, and lifted her. She was startlingly light. She buried her wet face against his neck, her trembling uncontrolled.
He turned and walked straight through the gaping spectators, past the hissing keg, and out the backyard gate. The noise of the party swelled once behind them, then was cut off by the slam of the gate latch.
The alley was dark and quiet, lined with overflowing trash cans. The only light came from a distant streetlamp, painting everything in long, stark shadows.
He carried her to a black Jeep parked further down the alley. “Here,” Joseph said, his voice calm. He bent and carefully put her down on the rough asphalt, letting her find her footing. She wobbled, clutching his jacket closed.
He popped the trunk. The light inside was weak, yellow. He pulled out a well-used duffel bag, unzipped it, and rummaged past notebooks and a pair of cleats. His fingers closed on familiar, soft material. He pulled out his Tigers away jersey, number 16 in bold white against the deep blue.
He handed it to her without ceremony and turned around, giving her his back. He stared at the brick wall, hearing the wet slap of her dress hitting the pavement, the small, shaky sounds of her struggle.
Behind him, Bella lifted the heavy, sodden weight of her dress over her head and let it fall. The night air hit her skin, raising goosebumps. She pulled his jersey on. It was massive, drowning her, the hem hitting her mid-thigh. It smelled faintly of clean cotton and something else, something like grass and leather. It was warm.
Joseph peeled off his own soaked t-shirt, the fabric clinging. He tossed it into the boot, the water from it making a dark splash on the carpet. He pulled a dry training shirt from his bag—grey, with the Tigers logo faded from wear—and tugged it on over his head.
He closed the trunk. The sound was final in the quiet alley.
She was already climbing into the passenger seat when he got to the driver’s side. He slid in, the car creaking under his weight. He inserted the key, turned it. The engine coughed once, then rumbled to life, a vibration through the seats. He cranked the heat, directing the vents toward her.
Streetlights began to slide past the windshield as he pulled out of the alley.
“Thank you.” Her voice was small, aimed at the window. She watched the darkened houses blur by.
He turned his head to look at her. In the intermittent glow of passing lights, he saw her profile, the jersey swallowing her frame, her wet hair dark against the blue fabric. He said nothing, just returned his eyes to the road. His hands were steady on the wheel.
The heater whirred, pushing out a thin, lukewarm breath.
“He’s such a dick.” It was a mumble, barely audible over the engine.
“Who?” Joseph asked, though he knew. He knew exactly. He’d seen it for years. Caleb treating her like a convenient satellite, breaking her orbit every few months with some new distraction, then pulling her back in with a smile and a half-apology. And she’d realign every time.
“Caleb.” The name was a bitter pill. She finally turned from the window, looking at the dashboard as if it held answers. “He had some girl on his lap when I came down from the bathroom. Her hand was on his chest. He was loving it. Then he followed me outside to argue until he saw a crowd forming. Then it was my fault for making a scene. ‘She’s a friend, get over it.’ Then he just walked away.”
Joseph stayed silent, listening. His jaw tightened.
The silence stretched. It wasn’t empty. It was full of every unsaid thing, every time he’d watched it happen from across a party, every time he’d bit his tongue.
“They were all filming,” she said, the words hollow. “When I fell. I could hear them laughing. Not one person moved to help. Not one.”
A muscle ticked in Joseph’s cheek. He switched lanes, the turn signal clicking like a metronome in the dark.
“Why do I let him do that to me?” she whispered, not really asking him. Asking the night, the jersey, herself. “Why do I keep thinking it’ll be different?”
Joseph watched the road, his grip loose on the wheel. He’d wondered the same thing for years. From the sidelines, literally and figuratively. He’d seen Caleb drop a perfect pass, shrug, and blame the receiver. He’d seen him do the same to people. Bella was just the one who kept coming back for more punishment, hoping for a different result.
“I don’t know,” he said finally, his voice a low rumble. It was the truth.
He glanced over. She was staring at her hands, pale and small against the dark blue of his jersey. The green of her eyes was dimmed, not with tears, but with a hollow exhaustion that seemed deeper than the night.
He looked back at the road, then at her again, his profile sharp in the dash lights. “Sometimes we accept the love we think we deserve.”
The words landed softly, but they hit her with the weight of a truth she’d been avoiding. They weren’t pitying. They were just… a fact. A quiet, devastating fact.
A name surfaced, disconnected from the person sitting beside her. “Joseph?” she questioned, the syllable unfamiliar on her tongue.
“That’s me.”
A sudden, dark laugh bubbled out of her. It was devoid of humor. “Caleb would kill me if he knew I was in your car.” She let the statement sit there, examining it. The old fear, the automatic alignment with Caleb’s wars. Then she shrugged, the heavy fabric of the jersey shifting on her shoulders. “Actually, I don’t even care.”