Easy (contours of the Heart, #1)

Jacqueline Wallace, a college sophomore and bass player, leaves a Halloween party alone and is attacked in a dark parking lot by Buck, a fraternity member she has known for over a year. He pins her facedown across the truck seat and attempts to rape her. A stranger intervenes, beating Buck severely and breaking his nose. The stranger drives Jacqueline back to her dorm, tells her the attack was not her fault, and calls her "Jackie," a nickname she no longer uses, though she has never met him.

Two weeks earlier, Jacqueline's boyfriend of nearly three years, Kennedy Moore, broke up with her, framing the split as a strategic necessity before his planned political career. The breakup devastated Jacqueline, who had followed Kennedy to his university instead of auditioning for music conservatories, as her orchestra teacher had urged. She stopped attending their shared economics class and missed the midterm exam.

Pressured by her roommate Erin to return to class, Jacqueline recognizes her rescuer sitting in the back row, sketching. Her professor, Dr. Heller, gives her one chance to catch up through a replacement project and email tutoring with his class tutor, Landon Maxfield. Jacqueline and Landon develop a warm, increasingly flirtatious correspondence. At the campus Starbucks, she discovers her rescuer works there. Meanwhile, Buck tells everyone he was mugged by strangers, and nearly all of Jacqueline's friends side with Kennedy after the breakup, leaving her socially isolated.

After eavesdropping on a conversation, Jacqueline learns her rescuer's name is Lucas. On a Saturday night at a club, he asks her to dance, and they spend several songs pressed close before he vanishes without explanation. Erin and their friend Maggie hatch "Operation Bad Boy Phase," a plan for Jacqueline to use Lucas as a rebound. Reluctantly tempted, she approaches Lucas before class, introduces herself, and gives him her number. He visits her dorm to sketch her, tells her he is not like Buck, and asks to kiss her. Their first kiss leads to an intense makeout session.

Buck corners Jacqueline in the dorm stairwell, sober and deliberate, making explicit threats of rape. She pretends to comply, then escapes into the hallway where witnesses force him to leave. He implies they just had sex, and the rumor spreads. Jacqueline finally tells Erin about both attacks. Erin believes her immediately and breaks up with her boyfriend, Chaz, a fraternity brother who has been defending Buck.

Jacqueline's classmate Benji inadvertently reveals that Lucas is Landon Maxfield, the economics tutor, and that tutors are prohibited from fraternizing with the students they assist. Jacqueline is stunned but decides not to confront him, wanting Lucas to tell her himself. Erin enrolls them in a campus self-defense class, where Lucas is one of the instructors. He also teaches Jacqueline ground defense privately at his apartment, building her confidence when she freezes during the classroom exercise.

Their relationship deepens at his apartment above a detached garage. He shows her the charcoal drawing on his bedroom wall. When she asks him to stop before they go further physically, he immediately complies without pressure. Kennedy had always pressured her toward an all-or-nothing approach to physical intimacy, so Lucas's willingness to stop without guilt or resentment feels revelatory. During one visit, Jacqueline discovers jagged scars on both of Lucas's wrists, hidden within his tattoo designs, and assumes they are from a suicide attempt.

Over Thanksgiving, Jacqueline spends the holiday alone and reluctantly attends dinner at Kennedy's family home. Kennedy later calls to say the breakup was a mistake, but Jacqueline, realizing she is getting over him, declines. When Dr. Heller, who lives adjacent to Lucas's apartment, sees them together one evening, Lucas tells Jacqueline their relationship is over to protect her grade. His emails revert to impersonal worksheet attachments. Dr. Heller confirms her grade is safe.

At the annual Brotherhood Bash, Jacqueline refuses Buck's invitation to dance. Kennedy witnesses the exchange, and she tells him about the parking lot attack. He kisses her, but she pulls back, feeling nothing. Kennedy confronts Buck, who glares at Jacqueline with hatred. That same night, Buck rapes Mindi, a freshman sorority pledge. Jacqueline calls Lucas, who comes immediately and persuades Mindi to report the assault. At his apartment afterward, Jacqueline tells Lucas she misses both sides of him. He abandons his resolve and they reunite.

Lucas shares his history: After his mother died when he was 13, he spiraled into fighting and substance use. Dr. Heller intervened legally and helped him enter the university. Lucas confesses he noticed Jacqueline during the first week of the semester and attended the Halloween party hoping she would be there. Jacqueline and Mindi file police reports. The fraternity pressures Mindi to drop charges, but at a sorority meeting, the president, Katie, silences skeptics by revealing her own history of rape and declaring support for prosecution.

Jacqueline and Lucas sleep together for the first time. He reveals that his mother, Rosemary, was a painter and that his rose tattoo and a poem on his body are memorials to her. Jacqueline secretly Googles Rosemary's name and discovers she was raped and murdered during a home invasion. The killer restrained 13-year-old Lucas to his bedpost with zip ties; he was trapped for over 15 hours, tearing at his bonds until his wrists were lacerated. The scars she found are not from a suicide attempt but from that night. Dr. Heller fills in the remaining history and lifts the tutoring restrictions.

On their last evening before winter break, Jacqueline admits she investigated his past. Lucas is furious and asks her to leave. Outside, Buck, violating a restraining order, shoves her into her truck and pins her. Jacqueline uses her self-defense training to escape, and when Buck tackles her on the driveway, she executes the ground defense technique Lucas taught her. Lucas arrives and fights Buck until Dr. Heller pulls him off. Police take Buck away.

Afterward, Lucas reveals the guilt that has haunted him: His father's parting words the night of the murder were to take care of his mother. Jacqueline asks him to see himself as the boy he was, a child who could not have stopped a grown man, and echoes his own words: It was not his fault. She urges him to seek professional help. Jacqueline also tells her own mother about the assault; for the first time, her mother responds with emotional support.

The epilogue takes place months later at Lucas's graduation party. Jacqueline has been accepted to the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, fulfilling the dream she abandoned when she followed Kennedy. Buck received a two-year sentence through a plea bargain. Lucas accepted an engineering job in Cleveland, roughly 30 minutes from Oberlin, without telling Jacqueline where he applied so she could make her decision independently. He tells her that choosing to be with her is not a difficult decision: "It's easy. Incredibly easy."