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Prologue

Ana

Nine Years Ago

I looked over at Tyler and studied him. His shaggy light brown hair sat just above his deep green eyes. I loved those eyes. They were the first thing I had noticed about him.

The first time I saw Tyler, he was walking down the hallway of our high school. It was my first day as a freshman and I was intimidated and so scared of my new surroundings.

Puberty had hit hard that summer before and I had woken up with boobs the size of my thighs that had blossomed overnight. Stretch marks littered my skin as my body took a turn for the worse. The acne got bad. My vision tanked so I needed glasses.

Just like that, I was the fat girl at the back of the class with glasses and a small voice. I wanted to fade into the background and forget about where I was for the next four years.

But once I saw Tyler, I felt myself bloom into a completely different person.

His green eyes sucked me in, and the way they grazed down my body made me shiver. I went out of my way to find the hallways he walked down just so I could watch him watch me. By the time my freshman year was over, I was madly in love with Tyler Browning, a guy on his way to becoming captain of the football team and soccer star extraordinaire.

What I didn’t know until the end of my sophomore year was just how taken he was with me as well.

“You look nice,” Tyler said.

His sweet voice ripped me from my trance.

“Thanks. It’s a new outfit.”

“It looks nice on you, Ana. I like what it does to your—everything.”

I blushed at his words as we sat there on his couch. Two years ago seemed like an eternity. We’d been sixteen at the time., learning how to drive and thinking we had the world at our fingertips. Now we were about to graduate. At only eighteen years old, we were trying to figure out what we were going to do with the rest of our lives.

Tyler wanted to go to law school, but the positive pregnancy test I had taken that morning forecasted a very different story for my future.

“I got my acceptance letter from Harvard a few days ago,” Tyler said.

“Oh my gosh, really? Can I see it?” I asked.

“You want to see it?”

“Is that not something I should see?”

“I wasn’t sure how you were going to feel about it. I mean, Harvard isn’t really in California.”

“What does that have to do with anything? It’s your dream, right?”

“What do you mean, what does that have to do with anything?”

“Can I see the acceptance letter?” I asked again.

“Sure,” he mumbled.

He pushed himself off the couch, but I could tell by his movements that what I had said bothered him. I really didn’t know what to think. As an eighteen-year-old about to graduate high school, I didn’t have the emotional capacity to deal with his mood swings and the reality of the life I was living.

Closing my eyes, I conjured the image of that positive pregnancy test. The one in a plastic bag in my pocketbook. When Tyler had called me and asked me to come over tonight, I’d had it in my mind that I would tell him. I would tell him I was pregnant; then we could sit down and figure out a way to make it work.

After I was done crying on his shoulder at least.

“Here,” he said.

A piece of paper fell into my lap as I opened my eyes. He dropped onto the couch next to me, and I felt my anger getting the best of me. What in the world was his problem? He wasn’t the one pregnant and struggling to figure out what to do. He had a plan. He had a college that wanted him. He had a dream to fulfill.

All of mine had been smashed to bits.

Reading the acceptance letter, I had tears in my eyes. I was so proud of him. For the entirety of our senior year, he had been talking about Harvard, about going there and taking classes and enrolling in their law school program. I wanted to support him; I didn’t want to hold him back from fulfilling his dream.

My eyes flickered to my stomach before I set the letter off to the side.

“I’m really proud of you,” I said.

“That’s all you have to say, Ana?”

“What do you want me to say, Tyler? Tell me and I’ll say it.”

“I’m not going to tell you to say something. After two and a half years together, I figured I would get a little more than this.”

“I’m supporting you in your decision. What more could anyone ask for?”

“It doesn’t upset you at all that I’m about to cross the entire country to go to school?” he asked.