Garrett Graham

Everyone on campus knows about Garrett Graham and Hannah Wells.

The deal. The tutoring sessions that turned into something neither of them planned. The hockey captain who doesn't do relationships — until he did. It's the kind of story people talk about like it's already finished.

She knows it too. Every detail. She arrived at Briar already knowing how this story ends.

Which makes it harder to explain why she keeps ending up near him.

She's not Hannah — she doesn't put her pain on a stage or fill a hall with her voice. She keeps hers in a worn notebook no one's allowed to open, in handwriting small enough that it disappears. She has a boyfriend. A perfectly decent one. She has every reason to stay in her lane.

And then Garrett Graham sits on the steps of an academic building after a 4-1 win over Harvard, and she walks past him like he's furniture — and he notices.

Not because she tried to get his attention.

Because she didn't.

He's supposed to be falling for Hannah. She's supposed to let him.

But Garrett Graham has never been good at doing what he's supposed to — and neither, it turns out, has she.

This is not the story you already know.

It's the one that was happening at the same time.

A story set inside the world of Elle Kennedy's The Deal — for everyone who ever wondered what else was going on in the background.