So far, freshman year at Truman High had been the best year of her life. She’d lost the weight…had even made the cheer squad. The acne medication had cleared up the worst of the pimples, and while the braces weren’t exactly stylish, they’d already made a huge improvement on the huge front teeth she’d had her whole life.

But this? This felt a little bit like déjà vu.

Her pulse went into overdrive as Angela led her in the direction of the courtyard. Hardly a place where one’s bra should be. Ever.

It took Brynn several seconds to register what she was seeing. A tiny scrap of white lace was very distinctly flapping in the breeze several inches below the American flag.

Through the roaring in her ears, she dimly became aware of the crowds of students standing around and pointing. Laughing.

Eight years’ worth of painful schoolyard memories came rushing back over her.

“Nobody knows it’s yours,” Angela said softly. “Just you and me.”

Brynn’s eyes remained locked on the small bra. Small to fit her small size. When she’d lost weight, her boobs had been the first to shrink. “No, Ang, we’re not the only ones. It’s you, me, and the jackass who did it.”

Angela’s eyes flew open. “Do you know who it was?”

Brynn’s eyes scanned the courtyard until they found what she was looking for. Whom she was looking for.

His blue eyes locked with hers, much as they had a couple months earlier on the football field.

But this time, her stomach didn’t flip in excitement. It turned in hatred. Three months ago, she’d thought Will Thatcher’s interest in her had been, well…interest.

Turned out it was disdain. And disdain had turned into antagonism.

You started it, she reminded herself. The first time he’d tried to talk to her, she’d been so nervous that she’d gone into what her little sister called Ice Princess mode.

He’d been taking small hits at her ever since. Catcalling her when she walked by, telling the boy who had asked her to the homecoming dance that she was a prude…

He’d even accidentally-on-purpose ran into her, knocking her notebooks all over the ground, only to taunt her as he’d helped her pick them up.

But this? This was a new level of mean.

Brynn’s eyes narrowed at the smirk on his face.

She’d spent her entire life dealing with bullies. She could take on this one.

It was war.

And she was more than happy to engage.

* * *

Brynn took the last cookie out of the bakery bag and set it on her second-favorite white platter. She’d long ago stopped fretting about the lack of the homemade factor.

Did she wish that she’d mastered baking? Sure.

And she would. Someday.

But for now she worked sixty-hour weeks and barely had time to buy flour, much less use it.

And deep down, Brynn suspected that homemade was perhaps just a touch overrated. Why opt for homemade imperfection when you could just buy actual perfection?

Nobody had to know. Most of her friends thought she could rival Betty Crocker in a baking contest.

She hoped the new neighbors weren’t gluten-free, or whatever, because they were about to have the best chocolate chip cookies that they’d ever had. Specialty’s cookies were one of the few indulgences Brynn allowed herself once a month. Her butt wasn’t going to fit into skinny jeans without a little self-control.

Brynn moved a couple cookies around so the plate looked symmetrical, and then headed upstairs to the bedroom to change her clothes. There was a fine line between casual-chic and casual-frump, and her favorite ratty athletic shorts were in the latter category.

Brynn had quickly learned that while yoga pants were always fair game in the suburbs (whether or not one actually did yoga), other athletic wear was not for public consumption. Probably because being spotted in well-worn gym shorts gave away the fact that one actually had to work out to look the way they did.

And Brynn definitely had to work at it. If she heard one more petty girlfriend complain about Brynn’s slender figure being “unfair,” Brynn was going to come unglued. She worked damn hard to keep her butt from wiggling and stomach from spilling over her jeans. She ran at least five times a week and did yoga on most weekdays. Maybe there were some women out there who were effortlessly thin. Brynn only aspired to make it look effortless.

She knew what it felt like when none of her clothes fit. Knew the despair of realizing she had to go up a size again.

And she was never going back down that path, no matter how much she hated the exercise or wanted the cookie.

Pulling on a casual white skirt and short-sleeved black turtleneck, she smoothed back her hair into a low ponytail and grabbed the plate of cookies and her keys. Showtime. The moving truck had been gone for a few hours now. Plenty of time for the new family to settle in, and plenty of time for her to have made welcome to the neighborhood cookies.

Brynn mentally kicked herself for not making it to last week’s cul-de-sac party. She’d missed whatever scoop her neighbors had on the newcomer to the neighborhood. They probably had kids. Most people in Foxgrove Estates did. She only hoped they were the quiet, intellectual type of children, and not the throw-a-baseball-through-your-living-room-window types.

It didn’t really matter either way, though. The sad truth was, Brynn had little in common with any of her neighbors. They were all friendly and welcoming, but the group was made up almost entirely of families or couples. The only other single person was the elderly Mrs. Hoover, and she had her grandkids visit every weekend, which meant she was at least up-to-date on all the latest kid lingo. Meanwhile, Brynn had mistakenly thought Justin Bieber was a Harry Potter character, and the neighborhood’s under-twelve population had yet to let her forget it.

The path to her new neighbor’s front door was only a few feet from her own if she cut across the grass, but walking on the lawn didn’t even cross her mind. What was she, an animal? Instead, she carefully marched down her driveway, across the sidewalk, and back up the new neighbor’s driveway toward the front door.

As was typical in master-planned communities, this house wasn’t all that different from her own. Lots of brick, unobtrusive cream-colored paneling, and a dark mahogany front door. James was forever rambling about how McMansion-style houses like hers lacked character, which was a bit hypocritical, coming from a guy who drove the same BMW as half the other doctors at the hospital where he worked.

But Brynn actually didn’t mind the cookie-cutter nature of the neighborhood. Why did everyone think that character had to mean haphazard quirkiness? Her house did too have character. It was just uniform, organized character. Just as she liked it.

Nobody responded to her soft knock, so she tried the doorbell. She saw a shadow move through the slim glass partition in the door and straightened her shoulders and put on what Sophie referred to as her “orthodontist smile.”

The door swung open and Brynn’s vision went blurry as she felt her perfect smile crack.

She couldn’t breathe.

It had never occurred to her that a single, good-looking guy would answer the door. And it certainly hadn’t occurred to her that she would know him.

Intimately.

“Will, what the hell are you doing here? Tell me you’re working for the moving company.”

He leaned against the door and looked down at her. His faded jeans and tight white T-shirt were perfectly acceptable for moving-day attire and yet they annoyed her to no end. The jeans hugged body parts she’d rather forget, and the shirt displayed proof that he hadn’t neglected the gym while he’d been whoring himself on the East Coast.

“Hey, neighbor,” he said, shooting her a cocky grin.

Hope that he was just passing through town crumbled around her feet, and her fingers clenched her cookie platter.

“You don’t live here,” she ground out. “You can’t.”

He shrugged. “If you say so.”

“You live in Boston,” she said firmly.

“Sold my place last week,” he said, reaching for the cookies.

Brynn slapped his hand away. “Well, you can’t live here. I live there,” she said, jabbing her finger at her house to the left.

“Do you now?”