Chapter 2Faking Amnesia To Scam My CEO Rival

Since I was "perfectly fine," we checked out of the hospital quickly.

As we walked down the corridor, I caught my reflection in the glass doors. Dear God. My hair was a rat's nest, and there was literally a crushed ivy leaf plastered to my forehead. I looked like a swamp witch.

Okay, Nolan definitely didn’t want to kiss me. He just wanted to get close enough to laugh at my misery. Classic.

"Got your meds. Let’s go home, Harp."

Nolan jogged over to me, shrugging off his heavy wool trench coat and draping it over my shoulders. He flashed me a warm, genuine smile that made my chest do a weird, unprompted stutter.

Damn it. That was the smile I used to be entirely in love with.

When exactly did we turn into enemies?

I let my mind drift back. It was junior year of high school. Nolan was seventeen; I was sixteen.

It was the same year Declan Reed transferred to our prep school.

Nolan had always been the golden boy. Sharp jawline, piercing eyes, effortlessly athletic, and fiercely intelligent—he never dropped below the top of the honor roll. He was the center of gravity at our school.

And naturally, I was the one orbiting closest to him. Because of my late-summer birthday and skipping a grade, I was placed in his year. He carried my ridiculously heavy backpack. He did my share of the lab clean-ups. Even during P.E., when we had to run the dreaded mile, he’d finish his laps first and then fall back to jog beside me, keeping my pace.

"If you get too tired, Harp, I’ll literally carry you home," he’d tease, jogging backward effortlessly. "Come on, keep moving!"

He was always coaxing me, always gentle. I had never seen him truly angry. Falling for him was the most natural thing in the world. Besides, half the school was in love with him anyway.

We were inseparable. Until midterms.

Right before exams, Declan Reed arrived. He was quiet, brilliant, and possessed the kind of brooding good looks that made girls whisper in the hallways. The administration treated him like royalty because, between Declan and Nolan, our school was guaranteed two Ivy League acceptances.

Two days before the exams, Nolan got sick. Badly sick. Pneumonia. He lost weight, his skin was pale, and he spent study hall with his head buried in his arms on his desk, coughing weakly.

My heart ached for him, but I knew better than to bother him when he felt like trash.

I was sitting a few desks away, chewing on my pencil, staring blankly at AP Calculus. Declan happened to walk by, noticed my struggle, and leaned over, effortlessly solving the equation in two steps.

I beamed at him and gave him a thumbs-up. He really was Nolan’s equal.

Because I was the youngest in the grade, I still had a bit of baby fat in my cheeks. It was freezing in the library, and I was buried in this oversized, fluffy white sweater Nolan had bought for me. I probably looked like a lost sheep. Declan chuckled and affectionately ruffled my hair.

"Not bad, kid."

I hadn't noticed him reaching out, so I didn't dodge it.

But a second later, the temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees. I turned around to see Nolan. His head was off his arms. He was staring at us, his eyes narrowed into dark, icy slits. He looked like someone had just broken into his house and stolen his most prized possession.

That afternoon, the sky opened up. A massive, torrential downpour hammered the city.

When the final bell rang, Nolan didn't wait for me. He walked straight out into the torrential rain. Because our families were high-profile, we always walked the few blocks home rather than waiting for obvious town cars, trying to keep a low profile.

He just left me there. I stood under the school awning, stunned, until a large black umbrella appeared over my head.

I looked up. It was Declan. "No umbrella? Come on, I’ll walk you back."

I watched Nolan’s silhouette disappear into the gray sheets of rain, a heavy knot forming in my stomach. What had I done wrong?

Later that evening, long after I got home, I snuck up to the attic window that faced Nolan’s house. His bedroom light was off. He hadn't come home yet.

But he left so early, I thought. Where is he?

I was just about to go downstairs and call his mom when I finally saw him walking up his driveway. He was soaked to the bone. Dripping wet. He looked exhausted, defeated, and utterly miserable.

Usually, when he got to his room, he’d look across the yard to my window and wave. But that night, he walked in, didn't even glance my way, and aggressively yanked his curtains shut.

The next morning, Nolan was waiting on my porch as usual, but he didn't say a single word.

I tried to break the ice. "Nolan, yesterday..."

"Declan walked you home," he interrupted. It wasn't a question. It was a cold, hard statement.

As he said it, he reached out, grabbed my heavy backpack, and slung it over his shoulder, just like always.

He was acting weird, but at least he was talking to me again. I felt a rush of relief.

But just as I smiled at him, I looked up and saw Declan standing by the school gates, waving at us.

Nolan looked at Declan, then looked down at my smiling face. His jaw clenched. "Does seeing him really make you that happy?"

That was the day the fracture began.

The rumors started pouring in. I heard Sloane Kensington—the reigning queen bee of the junior class—bragging that Nolan had given her his umbrella the day before. So that was why he walked home in the rain. To be chivalrous to Sloane.

Then, I saw a braided leather lucky charm tied to Sloane’s designer tote. She loudly proclaimed it was a blessed talisman from a monastery upstate. Nolan had mysteriously taken a weekend trip upstate right before he got pneumonia.

Later, rumors started flying that I was secretly dating Declan.

When someone asked Nolan about it in the locker room, I happened to be walking by. I heard him say, with forced apathy, "Why would I care who she dates? She’s nothing to me."

The final nail in the coffin was graduation. Declan was moving to London for university. I was sitting on the quad, looking miserable—mostly because my relationship with Nolan had completely deteriorated into cold warfare.

Nolan walked up to me, looked down with a sneer, and said, "Still crying over Declan leaving? Fine. Tell your dad I’m taking over the logistics account your family has been trying to close. Consider it gone."

From that day on, it was war. We spent the next eight years going at each other's throats, both refusing to yield, finding sick satisfaction only when we could make the other person lose.