I'll Leave So You Can Be Happy

Ten years ago, a wildfire on Interstate 5 near Portland, Oregon, killed Ethan's parents as they pulled young Claire Hart from a trapped car. Claire's parents, James and Victoria Hart, took him in, raised him, and paid his tuition and living costs. Everyone assumed Ethan and Claire would grow up side by side, go to college together, and eventually marry.

Then, late one night after graduation, Ethan finds a post written by Claire from ten years in the future. In it she calls him the living face of a debt her parents took on, and says that if she could choose her life again, the first thing she would give up is the person her parents forced on her. The post describes an engagement party where she admits she loves Logan, Ethan's best friend, and uses the funding for his grandmother Margaret Dawson's heart treatment to force him to end the engagement.

Ethan reopens his Leiden University acceptance letter, a full scholarship, and accepts it, choosing to leave rather than live as a burden Claire wants to escape.