Rival (fall Away, #3)

Told in alternating perspectives, the story follows stepsiblings Fallon Pierce and Madoc Caruthers, whose volatile history of rivalry, secrecy, and desire spans from their sophomore year of high school into their freshman year of college.

A prologue set two years before the main events introduces Fallon, a self-described outsider and the daughter of Patricia, the gold-digging wife of wealthy lawyer Jason Caruthers. Fallon watches her stepbrother Madoc and his friend Jared Trent bully classmate Tatum Brandt in the hallway at Shelburne High. When Fallon confronts them, Madoc mocks her lack of friends and cheap clothes, dismissing her as a freeloader. Their mutual contempt is sharp, but an undercurrent of attraction runs beneath it.

Two years later, Madoc is a recent high school graduate spending his summer with Jared, Tate (now Jared's girlfriend), and Jared's half-brother Jaxon Trent, known as Jax. When Jason calls to say Fallon has returned to the Caruthers house, he orders Madoc to stay away. Meanwhile, Fallon settles back in with Addie, the family's beloved live-in housekeeper who has served as more of a mother to both teenagers than their actual parents. Fallon's old bedroom has been stripped of her belongings and redecorated by Patricia. On a run through local trails, Fallon meets Tate, and the two bond over shared interests and plans to attend Northwestern University in the fall. Tate invites Fallon to Madoc's upcoming party, unaware of the stepsiblings' history. Privately, Fallon reveals she has an ulterior motive for returning, one that requires getting Madoc home.

Madoc sneaks home that night and enters Fallon's room while she sleeps. Their encounter is vicious: He claims she was only convenient for sex; she retorts that he was inadequate. The next morning, both manipulate Addie into believing they can coexist. Addie reveals that Madoc began secretly playing the family piano again, alone in the basement at night, starting the day Fallon left.

At Madoc's pool party, Fallon provokes him by stripping to lingerie and integrating into his friend group. When she delivers a cutting public assessment of his character, Madoc retaliates by singing a song mocking her mother. Fallon flees, stealing his car. He chases her to a skate park, where buried truths explode in the rain. Madoc reveals that after Fallon disappeared, Patricia told him Fallon had complained about their sexual relationship and wanted to get away from him. Fallon is stunned: She never said any such thing. Their parents discovered the relationship on their own and lied to both teenagers to separate them.

This revelation collapses the hostility. A flashback shows their first time together at 16: Madoc rescued Fallon from an aggressive partygoer, they fought in her bedroom, and the fighting dissolved into a kiss she begged him not to stop. In the present, they have sex on the hood of his car in the rain, and Fallon admits she never wanted to leave.

Their connection deepens over the following days. But when Fallon goes to Madoc's room intending to seduce and then abandon him as part of a revenge plan, she breaks down, realizing the encounter would cost her more than him. Madoc follows her to her room, pulls her into his lap in front of a mirror, and delivers a raw confession: He sees everything he wants when he looks at them together, and when she left, he tore everything off his walls thinking she hated him. They make love in front of the mirror.

Fallon's internal conflict intensifies. She came home to blackmail Jason with evidence of his corruption and his 18-year affair with Katherine Trent, Jared's mother. After reconnecting with Madoc, she changes her plan. Instead of leaking the story to the media, she confronts Jason privately. Her demands are restrained: Divorce Patricia with a fair settlement, and help a family associate make parole. She then reveals what Jason never knew: Patricia forced her to have an abortion, terminating her pregnancy with Madoc's child, and she endured it alone. Jason is devastated.

Madoc wakes to find Fallon gone. Jason shows him the evidence, reveals his plan to marry Katherine, and orders Madoc to leave for Notre Dame. Enraged, Madoc picks a fight with Jared before grudgingly reconciling. Fallon retreats to the house of her father, Ciaran Pierce, an Irish crime figure, losing weight and plagued by nightmares. She agrees to room with Tate at Northwestern.

Madoc spends the rest of the summer isolated at Notre Dame, unable to move past Fallon. By October, his friends stage an intervention, bringing Fallon along. At a bar, Madoc cuts in when another man asks Fallon to dance, and they share a devouring kiss before he deliberately pulls away. Tate engineers a confrontation in a dark park. They fight; Fallon punches him and screams that she has never been with anyone but him. They have sex, but the next morning she is gone again.

An extended flashback reveals the depth of Fallon's trauma: After the forced abortion, she drove to Shelburne Falls and found Madoc with another girl, then let go of the steering wheel and crashed into a tree. Her father found her in the hospital and subjected her to a harsh intervention, demanding she stop giving up. He quoted Andrew Harvey: "Nothing that happens on the surface of the sea can alter the calm of its depths." The phrase became Fallon's defining mantra and a tattoo down her back.

In the present, Fallon visits the Caruthers house and discovers that Madoc saved every item her mother threw away, boxing up her Legos, skateboards, and drawings and storing them under the piano. Fallon sobs for the first time in two years. That night, she texts Madoc, escalating from a tentative apology to a declaration of love. He drives from Notre Dame in under an hour. She leaps into his arms and tells him she is in love with him.

Over the next two days, they rebuild their connection. But Jax, searching Patricia's financial records at their request, discovers the abortion clinic bill. Madoc confronts Fallon, furious he was kept in the dark. She reveals the full meaning of her Valknut tattoo, a Norse symbol of rebirth and reincarnation: It is a memorial for their child. Madoc resolves that someone will pay.

When Patricia arrives the next morning threatening to separate them, Madoc proposes with a Caruthers family heirloom ring. Fallon says yes. They drive to Chicago, marry at a pub with Jared and Tate as witnesses, and sway to U2's "All I Want Is You." Their honeymoon at the Waldorf Astoria is interrupted when Patricia reports Fallon missing and tips off the media. Fallon blurts out that Madoc is her husband, and they decide to stop running.

At home, Madoc confronts his father, telling Jason he has never liked him but loves him. Jason, tearful and broken, signs the house deed over as a wedding gift. At the annual Triumph Charity Event, Jax executes a final strike: He reveals he filmed himself sleeping with Patricia, then announces on camera that he is 17, making her guilty of statutory rape. He forces Patricia to sign divorce papers relinquishing all claims and hands the deed to Madoc and Fallon.

In the novel's final scenes, Fallon reclaims the theater room Madoc has avoided since Patricia sexually propositioned him there during high school. She and Madoc make love on a different couch, and Fallon declares she will make him love the room again. Later, she asks about his back tattoo. He tells her it does not say "Fallen": It says "Fallon," her name, inked two years ago because he never stopped loving her. She whispers, "That's because we're unstoppable." They race at the Loop, a local makeshift racetrack, with Jared and Tate, then return home and plan to move both the piano and Fallon's half-pipe upstairs, merging their separate lives into one shared home. Madoc reflects that Fallon taught him to lead rather than follow, and the novel closes with his emphatic internal declaration: "Damn right."