Miranda leans back into the sofa, folding herself small, hugging her knees to her chest. Her face crumples, but she doesn’t look away.
“Well”—she sniffs, voice thin and raw—“I never knew my dad. I knew he was a junkie of some sort, but I didn’t know who. I don’t even think my mom did.”
She takes a shaky breath.
“Have you heard of those tent cities in LA? The ones where all the people society tries to ignore end up living—the meth addicts, the homeless, the prostitutes?”
I nod quietly, fighting the urge to reach for her too soon. She needs space to get this out.
“Well… that was where I lived as a child.”
Her words hit like a punch to the ribs, but I school my features and nod again, silently urging her to continue. She’strembling. I can practically feel the weight of every memory pressing against her bones.
“I mean… it honestly wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been,” she says softly. “I was pretty protected. My mom was respected, for the most part. And everyone left me alone.”
Her voice grows even smaller, like she’s folding into the memory.
“I didn’t know any different. That was just… life.”
She swallows, and I see her jaw tighten—like she’s preparing herself to peel open wounds she has kept sealed for years.
I’ve always known Miranda carried a dark past. I felt it in the way she flinched at certain topics and in the way her eyes shuttered when conversations drifted too close to things she didn’t want to remember. I knew it was bad—knew it was something she had buried deep enough that she hoped no one would ever unearth it.
But hearing the truth from her lips…
Hearing how she grew up, what she survived?—
I can barely reconcile it with the woman in front of me.
How did someone so sweet, so soft, so loyal and loving… come fromthat?
How did she climb out of a childhood like that and still becomeher?
As she speaks, pieces start fitting together in ways that make my chest ache. The guardedness. The panic I’ve caught flashing through her eyes. The way she always assumes she’s the problem, or too much, or undeserving. The way she never believed happiness was meant for her.
None of it makes her broken.
But it tells me exactly how much she had to survive.
I force myself to stay still, to stay calm, to let her get it all out. I want her truth—all of it—not just the newspaper version or thewhispers online. I want the version she’s never trusted anyone with before.
Because once she tells me everything…
I’m going to tear down the damn earth to make it right.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SEVEN
MIRANDA
My story has just begun, and I don’t know what I expected Miles to do. But he sits across from me, looking at me with so much love in his eyes, the same way he looks at me every single day. That beautiful look gives me the strength to keep going.
“So I grew up in one of those tent cities,” I say softly. “And while it wasn’t ideal, I was… I don’t know… fine, I guess. I went to a local school. It was a poor school. The education wasn’t great, but it was still school.”
Miles doesn’t flinch. He just nods, encouraging.
“One of my gym teachers noticed how good I was at basketball and gave me my own ball when I was six. It became my only real possession. Around the corner from the tents was this old court with a single hoop—no net, a cracked backboard, but it was enough. Whenever I wasn’t at school, I was there. Shooting. Playing. Escaping.”
