Chapter 4: Wanting What You Can’t Have

That’s right.

I wanted Savannah Pierce.

From the very first moment I saw her.

I remember the first day she transferred in—sunlight catching in her hair, her laugh ringing out over the quad. I was done for.

*

I have to admit, Savannah’s timing was perfect.

For the seventeen years before she appeared, I had only one dream.

When my dad slapped me across the face, yelling, “You were only born to be a match for your brother, and you’re not even good for that, you useless waste!”—that line still rings in my ears sometimes. Stings, too.

When my mom forced me to drop out and work early, scraping together every dollar for my brother’s treatment—

To get into the best college and get out of here.

Not for a second did I forget. I never dared slack off.

Later, even when I casually picked up the hardest math test and breezed through it, I knew I could get into any school I wanted.

I was just waiting for the SATs. Just needed that one shot.

Looking back at my dusty, gray seventeen years, all I saw was a depressing childhood and a life spent buried in books. Sometimes, I’d catch myself thinking, “Is this really all there is?”

That day, the TV was replaying “Legally Blonde.” I stared at Reese Witherspoon’s bold, charming face on the screen for a long time, thinking, “If only I could fall in love with a girl that beautiful at seventeen.”

And then Savannah appeared.

She was younger, somehow even more stunning than Reese Witherspoon in “Legally Blonde.”

Every move she made—her short skirt barely hinting at perfect curves—stirred up every buried want I had.

I wanted her, but I couldn’t have her.

Like I said, all my skill points were in studying. Other than that, I was painfully ordinary, just another face in the crowd.

Definitely not the kind of guy someone like Savannah Pierce—always the center of attention—would ever notice.

But now, Carter had handed her to me himself.

For the first time, I felt like maybe the universe owed me something.

*