Page 1 of The Wrong Play

PROLOGUE

RILEY

NINETEEN YEARS OLD

The moment he left me, I felt it.

The hollow ache.

The sickening weight pressing down on my chest like something inside me had caved in. I barely remembered the drive home; I barely noticed when my feet carried me through the front door of my parents’ empty house. The silence was deafening, stretching through the space like a reminder of just how alone I was.

I dropped my bag by the stairs, numb, my head spinning with the words Brandon had said before walking away.

It’s not you,Riley.I just need to figure some things out.

I don’t want to hurt you.

I think we should see other people.

We need time apart to figure out who we both really are.

And the last one.

You need someone who understands you.

Lies. Each and every one of them. The type of pretty words a guy says when he doesn’t have the guts to tell you the truth—he wants someone else.

I sniffed, my throat thick, my vision blurring. I didn’t want to cry over him.

But it wasn’tjusthim. It was everything. The way my parents were always gone, too distracted by their own lives to notice me. Always off on business trips or charity galas, smiling for cameras, pretending they had a perfect family waiting at home. But they didn’t. I was home. And they weren’t.

Because who could even want me?

Brandon had been right to leave. He’d figured it out before I did—that I was too much and not enough all at the same time. Too needy, too desperate, too pathetic. I clung too hard to things that didn’t belong to me, to people who were already halfway out the door.

Maybe there was something broken inside me, something unlovable. Something that was constantly chasing after something that didn’t want to be caught.

Maybe it was the way my body was always working against me. The exhaustion, the pain that never really went away, the days where even getting out of bed felt like a battle. My chronic exhaustion had been a shadow over my life for as long as I could remember—one that I’d stopped talking about, because what was the point? No one wanted to hear about it. No one wanted to deal with the baggage that came with me. Certainly no one wanted to empathize with the fact that I was having to take a gap year between high school and starting my life…because my body wouldn’t cooperate.

I was always alone.

Always.

I wasn’t in love with Brandon. After he’d graduated high school, we’d hung out until I graduated a year later. He was nice. He included me. He filled the spots of loneliness.

Or at least he had.

Even if I wasn’t in love with him, this broken connection hurt. It made the loneliness I’d always felt come back…full force.

I walked into the kitchen, heading straight for the fridge, ready to drown myself in whatever I could find on the shelves. But I froze.

Because tonight…it turned out I actually wasn’t alone.

Hesat at the kitchen table like he belonged there, fingers lazily flipping through one of my father’s leather-bound books. A half-full glass of scotch sat beside him, and I knew if I got closer, its scent would mix with his. The faintest trace of his cologne—warm cedarwood and something deeper, something that always lingered long after he’d left.

“Riley, I didn’t hear you come in,” he said, lifting his eyes from the book. His voice was smooth and unhurried—like honey laced with something sharp, something dangerous. It was the kind of voice that wrapped around you like silk. Or at least it had always felt that way for me.

Professor Callum Westwood.

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