“They accepted me.”
“Cass—”
“I leave in two months,” I say quietly. “Training first. Then deployment. Field work. Disaster zones. Real shit. Not seedy bars and bunny ears and men who think their money buys my silence.”
Her hands shake.
And that’s when I see it.
The real Lola — not the sarcastic one, not the tough one, not the one who patches herself together with caffeine and excuses — but the girl who’s been my sister in every way that matters, the one who’s pulled me out of bathroom stalls when I couldn’t breathe, the one who gave me a home in a city that eats girls like us alive.
She looks… wrecked.
“You didn’t tell me.”
“I didn’t want to jinx it.”
“You’re leaving.”
“I have to.”
“Cass—”
“No.” I force a smile — the one I put on when everything inside me is collapsing. “This is good. This is right. I don’t want to survive anymore, Lo. I want to matter.”
She nods.
But her eyes don’t agree.
And neither do mine.
Because now I have thirty days to forget the man who made me feel everything I swore I couldn’t.
And sixty until I leave the only place I’ve ever called home.
God help me — I don’t know which one will break me first.
She’s too quiet.
Lola never shuts up, but right now she’s blinking too fast, breathing too shallow, like she’s trying to hold something inside that’s fighting to break free.
“Lo?”
She looks up.
And her bottom lip trembles before she breaks.
“I can’t lose you too.”
The words hit like a punch to the ribs.
She shoves her coffee aside and pushes up from the chair like she can’t stay still in the centre of this moment. Her hands fist in her hair, pulling it back, pacing the length of the kitchen like there’s a bomb lodged beneath her sternum and she’s detonating in slow motion.
“You don’t get it,” she says, voice rising. “You don’t fucking get it, Cass.”
I don’t breathe.
She keeps going.
