Eight years later, on August 23, Kami starts her senior year feeling unsettled. She reflects on a strained summer beach trip with her parents: her father, Roger Hamilton, the person she “loved most” in the world, and her mother, Anne, a beauty-obsessed perfectionist she privately calls the “ice queen.” A small triangular scar on her wrist carries both physical and emotional pain tied to events eight years earlier—including her role in exposing her mother’s affair to her father.

Anne has selected an expensive dress for the first day and closely monitors Kami's appearance and eating habits. Her two-year relationship with Danny Walker, the mayor’s son, has deteriorated, and she realizes she is no longer in love with him. She recalls losing her virginity to Danny before the summer trip and realizing she could not stop thinking about someone else. After dropping off her energetic six-year-old brother, Cameron, at school, Kami spots a moving truck at the house next door and is shocked to discover that Thiago Di Bianco has returned.

At school, she greets her best friend, Ellie Webber, and other classmates before Danny kisses her hello. Moments later, she spots Taylor Di Bianco at a nearby locker—older, with darker hair and a neck tattoo. Their exchange is brief and cold. Taylor walks away, and Kami fights back tears behind her composed public exterior.

From Thiago Di Bianco’s perspective on the same day, his thoughts center on Kami. He holds her directly responsible for revealing the affair between his father and Anne Hamilton—a disclosure that triggered his parents’ divorce, his father’s disappearance, his mother’s depression, and her later entry into an abusive relationship. When Thiago attacked the abusive boyfriend, he received a probation sentence. A condition of his sentence requires him to stay away from the man near Washington, D.C., and contributes to the family’s return to Carsville.

After leaving his mother to manage the move, Thiago rides to the high school for his new job as assistant basketball coach and detention supervisor, which Principal Harrison secured as a favor to Thiago’s mother. Harrison outlines his duties and three firm rules: no alcohol or drugs, no personal relationships with students, and no helping students break rules. Coaching goes well, and the team responds to him readily. After practice, he collides with Kami in the hallway. He steadies her, pulls away immediately, and refuses to engage when she tries to speak, telling her as he walks off that apologies cannot undo the past.

After a quiet week in which Taylor avoids her, tensions escalate around an exhibition basketball game. One evening, Thiago overtakes Kami on his motorcycle in a reckless move that startles her. Later, she is woken after dark by the doorbell to find Thiago on the porch with Cameron, who wandered next door unsupervised. She sends her brother inside and confronts Thiago, who declares coldly that he wants nothing to do with her family. The confrontation turns threatening when he slams his fist into the doorframe beside her head. Taylor steps out and pulls him back. Before leaving, Thiago warns her to keep a closer eye on Cameron. Taylor then shows Kami his matching triangular scar and says, “Some scars never heal” (33).

Before the exhibition game, Anne warns Kami to stay away from the Di Bianco brothers. On the way to the game, Kami ends her relationship with Danny after concluding that they want different things and that she would rather focus on herself and her future. He reacts with verbal cruelty and locks her in the car until Taylor knocks on the window, prompting Danny to unlock the door and let her out. At the game, a player named Victor Viani makes a crude public remark about Kami's sexual relationship with Danny. Thiago overhears and quietly threatens Victor into silence.

Thiago reflects on a miserable week made worse by the fact that he can see Kami’s bedroom window from his own—a detail that recalls a private signal code they shared as children, apart from Taylor. His old affection for her is shifting into physical attraction, even as he continues to resent her and blame the Hamilton family for the collapse of his own.

During the cheerleaders’ performance at the exhibition game, he cannot stop watching Kami. Afterward, Taylor and teammate Harry Lionel invite him to a party at Aaron Martin’s house. While cleaning the gym alone, he finds Kami shooting around by herself and discovers her lost phone, which he decides to hold onto rather than return—both to provoke her and because it gives him a reason to see her again. He taunts her with the “princess” nickname as she demands it back. When Ellie briefly steps outside, Thiago traps Kami’s hand as she reaches into his pocket for the phone, draws her in close, and whispers in her ear before walking out. He acknowledges to himself that he has “crossed a line [he] swore [he] wouldn’t cross” (47).

Still rattled by her physical reaction to Thiago’s closeness in the gym, Kami rides to the party with Ellie and tells her that word of her sexual relationship with Danny has spread among members of the basketball team and that she ended the relationship because she is no longer in love with him. At Aaron Martin’s house, their friend Kate introduces Kami and Ellie to Julian, Kate’s half-brother, who is joining their school.

Kami spots Taylor playing pool and accepts his challenge—the winner may ask the loser for anything. The game is close, but Kami wins by executing a difficult shot Taylor himself taught her years earlier. She uses her prize to tell him quietly that she is sorry for what happened eight years ago and asks to have his friendship back. Taylor reassures her that the fault lies with “our parents” and says he missed her too. They embrace. When Kami looks up from the hug, she sees Thiago watching from across the room.

Watching his brother and Kami embrace, Thiago feels a surge of jealousy alongside deeper resentment. He retreats to the kitchen, where a cheerleader named Amanda begins flirting with him. He flirts back and is close to kissing her when Taylor pulls him aside and warns that Amanda is a student—any romantic involvement could end his job and violate his probation. Realizing the risk, Thiago prepares to leave the party.

On his way out, Kami intercepts him and demands her phone. He mocks her until she shoves her hand into his pocket to take it herself. He grabs her hand and holds her close. Julian approaches and asks if Kami is all right; she covers smoothly, telling him Thiago is driving her home. Thiago, irritated by Julian’s attention, confirms the story and steers her outside. Once there, they argue until Taylor appears, takes the phone from Thiago by surprise, and returns it to Kami. When Taylor urges all three to try to get along, Thiago erupts. After Kami argues that she was only 10 years old when the events that divided their families occurred, he declares his hatred for the entire Hamilton family before walking away.

Taylor drives Kami home. In the car, she traces her scar and falls into a flashback: When they were children, Thiago proposed a triangular brand made with a heated wire to seal their bond permanently, using it to create matching scars on their wrists by a fire and promising “nothing will ever come between us” (66). Back in the present, Taylor defends his brother and says adjustment takes time before dropping her off.

Upstairs, thinking about Thiago leads Kami into a second flashback: Shortly after their first kiss, he guided her through the woods to an unfinished tree house he had been secretly building for all three of them, told her he admired her, and she kissed him on the cheek.

The next morning, Roger announces an unplanned out-of-town trip due to business problems. Anne interrogates Kami about the night before; to avoid questions about the Di Biancos, Kami lies and says Julian drove her home. Anne leaves for a spa day, putting Cameron in Kami’s care. During a run, Kami spots Thiago mowing the lawn next door and notices his mother on the porch, fearing a confrontation between the two women. When she returns, Cameron has already wandered into the Di Biancos’ yard and is talking excitedly with Taylor and Thiago. Taylor offers to take Cameron with him to Lowe’s, but worried about Anne’s reaction, Kami refuses, and Cameron storms off in a tantrum.