I keep trying—desperately—to come up with a way to fix this. Some plan, some loophole, some miracle statement to make it all disappear. But I don't see one. I genuinely don’t know what to do. It doesn’t matter if I disappear again, go into hiding, cut ties with Miles and Anna, and go back to being a ghost. It won’t undo the damage. They’re already affected. The story has already spread. The comments are already pouring in.
The genie is out of the bottle, and there's no shoving it back inside.
What kind of person does this? What kind of person digs up a trauma from over a decade ago and blasts it across the internet for entertainment? Who looks at a teenage girl’s worst moment and thinks,Yes, let me turn that into content?
I wanted to believe time had done its job—that enough years had passed for the world to forget, for me to heal. I wanted to believe that one stupid lapse in judgment and trusting the wrong person wouldn’t haunt me forever.
I wanted to believe that someone like Miles could love me and that I could have a future—an actual future—with him. A safe one. A joyful one. The kind of elusive happily ever after I’d stopped letting myself fantasize about years ago.
But now?
Now I don’t even know if love was ever an option for me.
I wasn’t honest with him. I didn’t warn him this could happen. I didn’t tell him the worst of my past—the parts I still cry over—the parts that made me vow I would never let anyone close enough to be collateral damage.
Now it is happening, and it’s going to destroy us.
That is all my fault.
Letting down my barriers, letting him touch my heart, letting myself fall—those are my faults too.
I’m not blameless in this, and for that, I will never forgive myself.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX
MILES
The second I open the front door, I know something is off.
The air feels different—heavy. Two seconds earlier, I was buzzing, practically vibrating with anticipation. I couldn’t wait to pull Miranda into my arms and kiss her until we both forgot the past forty-eight hours apart.
But the second I step over the threshold, that feeling dies.
The air in the house is suffocating, thick enough to set every nerve in my body on high alert. Something is wrong.
I drop my bags where I stand and walk quickly toward the living room. I skid to a stop when I see her.
Miranda sits curled on the sofa, her body slumped, her eyes glassy and bloodshot as she stares into the far corner. She’s zoned out as silent tears track down her cheeks, steady and unbroken.
She doesn’t even hear me come in.
My stomach drops. I’ve never seen her like this. I’ve seen her upset, but never like this. It’s scaring me.
I hurry toward her and lower myself onto the coffee table in front of her. I reach for her hands—cold, limp, trembling—and wrap mine around them.
“Miranda,” I say softly, “what’s wrong?”
The moment my voice cuts through the fog around her, she blinks, like she’s waking from a nightmare. She drags the sleeve of her sweatshirt across her face, smearing the tears but not stopping them.
Her voice is so small I almost miss it.
“I’m sorry.”
I shake my head. “For what? Miranda, look at me. What happened? Is everyone okay?”
I can hear the panic creeping into my voice, but I don’t care. My heart is racing because something inside the woman I love has broken.
