The campus breathed the bite of early fall.

Leya leaned in the bursar's office, her fingers clenched around the miserable envelope of torn bills she'd fought to gather together in months of vicious night shifts. Her heart pounded, pride and humiliation tangled in her chest. Every tip, every penny, every extra hour she'd worked—the exhaustion that seeped around her bones—had brought her to this counter.

"For Dalton Anderson," she said curtly but courteously, pushing the envelope ...