After the Rain, He Surrendered the Key to His Hea…

At half past five in the afternoon, the downpour was finally easing, and the air was thick with the raw scent of rain. Leander Hale stood alone under the eaves of the school gate, without an umbrella. He was the most unremarkable person in his class, quiet and withdrawn, long accustomed to fading into the edges of any crowd. And then, someone who had no business being there drifted toward him—Ivy Prescott, the girl everyone in school gravitated around, the one whose smile held shards of light in her eyes. She was holding a long black umbrella, as if she had been watching him all along. I’d heard of her. When she was kind to someone, she gave it everything she had, recklessly. People like that always hide a selfishness deeper than anyone else’s. But Caleb didn’t know that. He only stepped back on instinct, never realizing that from the moment Ivy Prescott drew near him—