Prologue

Knox was a good guy. You know the type—the boy all mothers adore and all fathers approve for their daughter based on his over-the-top politeness and dashing good looks. The one all the girls want to have and all the boys want to be. The perfect one. That was the image Knox projected, but he was more than that. He was more than a pretty face and a charming personality with impeccable manners. It wasn’t a cover for him. Knox truly was good down to his core.

If the saying is true, if actions speak louder than words, then Knox Harris was always screaming. He was the guy who carried the little old lady’s groceries to her car. The guy who tutored disadvantaged kids after school. The guy who plucked stray dogs from the side of the road and found them homes. The guy everyone trusted with their secrets and went to for advice.

Knox always had something nice to say, a smile on his face, an encouraging word or a funny joke. He was smarter than most and excelled at everything he attempted in life. The athletically-gifted boy didn’t know what it meant to fail. Every teacher praised him, and every student wanted to be his best friend. People gravitated toward him like the sun. A bright, shining, life-sustaining star they couldn’t pull their attention from even if he burned them to a crisp.

With his masterfully crafted abs, a crooked smile that showcased perfect sparkling teeth, dark brown hair that stuck out in all the right places, and coffee with cream brown eyes that pierced into your soul, Knox could have any girl he wanted and probably a handful of guys. Even if I hadn’t known him half my life, one look at him, and I would have believed the hype. He had it all.

Knox was incredible, but he didn’t seem to know it. He wasn’t cocky. He didn’t walk around school looking down on people like he owned them, and he never said or did a single thing that could hurt anyone’s feelings. In fact, Knox spent a good deal of time cheering people up and reminding them they were super special in their own way. He was the embodiment of perfection. You couldn’t help but love Knox Harris.

But I hated him. I hated Knox with such intensity it radiated from me in nearly visible waves. Every moment he was in my presence was pure misery. His sickly-sweet disposition and carefree life irritated the snot out of me, and I wanted to smack him across his handsome face most days. When he spoke, I wanted to puke in the nearest garbage can. The mere sound of his voice put me in a foul mood, not that I wasn’t always in one anyway.

Knox ignored me. If I’m honest, most people did. I didn’t matter. I wasn’t special like the other kids in school. Even the great Knox Harris knew that to be true, and I have no doubt that is why he never smiled at me, never shared a joke to cheer me up, never bothered to make eye contact with the one person he knew he couldn’t reach. I was the one soul Knox would never associate with in a school filled with hundreds of lost souls. In that respect, he was no different from the other self-centered, egotistical brats that roamed the halls with an air of importance.

It made me angry, so I made it my mission senior year to make his life as miserable as mine. Why not? Why should Knox have a wonderful life when some of us barely scraped by with a meager, almost nonexistent existence? I hated my life, and when I was finished with him, I vowed Knox would hate his just as much.

In hindsight, I should have known the destruction of his perfect world wouldn’t go according to plan. Nothing in life is that simple, not for me, but I couldn’t resist the challenge. Knox was just too perfect to be real, and I was so broken I couldn’t stand the sight of him. I wanted what he had, but I would never see a sliver of the happiness he experienced every waking moment of his life. Happiness I believed he took for granted.

It started out okay, my plan to destroy the beloved boy. I messed him up a time or two but try as I may, nothing stuck long enough to ruin him. He either took the hit in stride, or he distracted himself with something else. When things got started, I had no way of knowing that something else would be me. I also couldn’t have known that losing me would be what finally did him in, the hit that would push him to the point of devastation.

My plan required I get closer to him, observe his life on a more intimate level. Despite my aversion to all things Knox, I decided I would bite the bullet and learn all about him. Shortly after, and for some reason only known to God, Knox finally decided I was worth his precious attention. I intrigued him, and the harder I tried to ruin him the closer he got to discovering me. Then one day, he saw me. The real me. The real me didn’t scare him, and that terrified me. I don’t know how, but he saw something worth saving buried deep inside my blackened heart. He saw someone I didn’t even know existed, and he pulled her out of the hardened shell of a girl, kicking and screaming the entire way.

The thing is, when the whole mess started, I had no idea I would end up falling in love with him. Why would I ever expect such nonsense? Without a doubt, it was the most cliché scenario ever written in a young adult novel—the bad girl falling for the good boy. But there I was one night, staring into his stupid coffee-brown eyes, anxiously awaiting his reply to those three stupid words that accidentally spilled from my drunken, angry mouth.

“I love you.”

I’m Charlotte Woods, but you can call me Charlie. This is my story. The story of how one shattered girl set out to break an unbreakable boy. It’s not pretty. In fact, it’s messy as they come and some parts are downright tragic, so buckle-up for a bumpy ride. In some ways, I guess it’s Knox’s story too. He is, after all, the reason I’m still alive.