Twenty-four hours after their first encounter, he knew he’d never been more wrong. It happens. And it had happened to him.

After spending that first night on the couch with Josie, Tristan hadn’t stepped foot outside her apartment. He’d called work, citing a family emergency, and stayed for two more days. They did nothing more than talk and sleep, and sometimes he’d watch her sketch things in her notebook while he read. Most of their time together had been spent telling stories of their past. For so long those memories had been pushed into the background of his mind. It invigorated him to relive those happy scenes, playing them out for Josie to hear.

Tristan slid his tray onto the lunchroom table and took a seat. He poked at the brown glob of chili with his spoon.

“Where’s Mac?” he asked.

“She checked out in second hour,” Kohen answered.

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. April told Ryan who told me. April’s in that class with her.”

Tristan abandoned his food and searched the rows of tables for April Landry. This girl was the mouth of the South, and if anyone knew details, she surely would. Spotting her three tables over, he approached the group.

“Why did Mac leave?” he blurted out, interrupting a conversation already in progress.

“Who?” she said.

“McKenzi!”

“Oh, her,” April said, rolling her eyes. “I don’t know. One minute she was there, the next she was gone.”

The afternoon was torture. Tristan’s mind went over every possible scenario, each one more terrible than the one before. By the time the last bell rang, he’d convinced himself that McKenzi had suffered some sort of life-threatening injury and was lying helpless in Charity Hospital.

When the last bell rang, he ran the entire way to her house, tripping up the steps and collapsing onto the front porch. He beat on the front door, yelling for Earl to answer it and tell him that Mac was okay.

Finally, the door was thrown open and McKenzi stood staring at her exhausted boyfriend.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Are you okay? Let me look at you,” he almost shouted. Tristan entered her house, his hands checking the functionality of each limb, his eyes searching for signs of injury. He spun her in place, completing his thorough examination. “How’s your pulse? Are you feeling faint? Seeing spots? How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Are you done?” McKenzi asked, one eyebrow quirked at his crazed behavior.

“Why did you leave school?” Tristan asked, his voice accusatory.

“None of your business.”

“Tell me, Mac!”

“I don’t want to.”

“Fine! Just have your little secret,” he yelled.

“I can’t, Tristan.”

“You sure the hell can. I’ll go up there and rip every *NSYNC poster from your wall!”

“Fine, you hardheaded pig! I got my period, okay? I bled all over my favorite blue jean skirt and had to come home! Are you satisfied, you nosy ass?”

Tristan scrambled backward off her porch and, without another word, took off toward his house. When he finally made it home, he begged his mother to help him make it right. He couldn’t stand the idea of Mac being angry with him.

Two hours later, McKenzi answered the door to find a blue gift bag topped with a yellow bow. She looked around but found no sign of its owner. Tristan smiled from his hiding place, watching her carry the package inside. Having a doctor for a father, Tristan’s thorough sex talk had involved all aspects of reproduction and the female cycle. McKenzi sat at her kitchen table and unpacked her gift, item by item, unaware of being observed through the large bay window. There was a bottle of ibuprofen, a package of chocolates, a brand-new blue jean skirt with a tiny note written in Tristan’s obsessively neat cursive. McKenzi smiled, barely stifling her laughter as she read it: “I’m sorry. You’ll feel better in five to seven days. Tristan.”

Josie was so tickled by the story she smothered his face with kisses and insisted that he had to be the sweetest twelve-year-old in the history of the world. Tristan returned her kisses and whispered how he wished she could remember that day to tell him her own version of it.

Their relationship was a curious one—giving and taking in small doses. Josie still seemed shielded, as if she were awaiting rejection. Tristan knew no matter what he verbally promised, she’d never believe that he was here to stay. So he vowed to show her, to prove to her that he wasn’t just a fleeting reminder of her past. He felt as if his roots had taken hold and wrapped themselves around Josie. He was immovable and he’d remain that way for as long as she’d allow it.

The woman who sat before him was molded from years of acts so damaging Tristan couldn’t bring himself to imagine them. The fact that the people who were entrusted with her well-being had brought harm to her made him boil with anger. He didn’t understand how anyone could look into those eyes and bring hurt to this girl.

Tristan had always been protective. His father taught him to love and cherish women and to keep them safe at any cost. Dr. Daniel Fallbrook was just that kind of man. He still believed in chivalry and courtship and reverence for your elders. Tristan learned early on in life that his father’s word was final, his mother was never to be disrespected, and he was to put forth his very best effort on all tasks.

When Tristan lost McKenzi, he’d been devastated. He’d felt abandoned and completely cheated by her death. Everyone looked at him with sympathetic but dismissive eyes. They thought he would soon get over it. He was just a child. No one understood what Mac meant to him; they never would. Tristan had mourned her with every piece of his mind, body, and soul.

It had been one thing when she’d moved across the country. Both of them had been heartbroken. But they’d made promises to find each other again. There was solace in the fact that McKenzi still existed, however unreachable she may have been. When news of her death surfaced, Tristan hadn’t believed it. He’d thought that it had been a joke of the cruelest nature and raged out at anyone who would listen.

Looking back, he recognized now that he had gone through every Kübler-Ross stage of grief. After denial, Tristan’s anger had tried to purge McKenzi from his system, and when she wouldn’t go, he had begun to bargain. He’d begged and pleaded for just one more chance to see her, for just one more moment to tell her how much he needed her.

To a fourteen-year-old-boy, depression was not a familiar state. Though he knew the definition of the word and all its symptoms, Tristan was not able to recognize it in himself. Even though his grades suffered and he didn’t have the will to eat, Tristan thought he had finally accepted the loss of his best friend. His mother had watched him with a worried eye and his father had grown tired of the moping.

The summer after his sixteenth birthday marked two years since McKenzi had been gone. He’d finally become social again, hanging out with friends and spending more time outside his bedroom than in it.

This particular day, a group of boys had gone down to the lake for a party. There had been loud music and kids dancing around an overgrown bonfire. Couples huddled in dark shadows, kissing and pawing at each other. Girls, wearing next to nothing in the heat, danced together, taunting the boys. Tristan was immune to all of it. The waves lapped at the shore as he sat motionless, eyeing the beer growing warm in his hand.

She’d first appeared as part of a group, though Tristan would say that Fiona stood out like a goddess among mortals. Her cheerless blue eyes had reflected his own feelings and he’d felt drawn to her sadness. That was the instant that his life shifted, the circumstance that set into motion the destruction of every dream he had ever built.