“Of course you didn’t, you never do!” I threw my hands up in the air. “I hope having her locked up in your room all day was worth it, because you’ve been acting like a jerk ever since, and quite frankly I don’t want anything to do with this version of you who lets down the people he cares about.”
I bit my lip, hating how much I wanted him to say something that would make this all better, that would make me feel like I hadn’t lost him to something—or someone—I couldn’t fight. But he just looked at me with that same quiet sadness, as if he was finally starting to understand too.
I turned and walked away, the sound of the waves crashing against the shore drowning out everything else.
After that night on the beach, a chill seemed to settle over everything, like a fog creeping in from the shore. Wynter’s laughter, usually warm and easy, grew quiet and thoughtful. He started avoiding Hannah, not in the blatant, aggressive way that demanded attention but in a subtle, drifting way, as if he was already miles away from her, a distant figure on a different horizon. I’d watch them in passing, catching glimpses of Hannah’s frustration, her eyes dark with something close to desperation as she realized he was slipping away.
I knew she’d tried reaching out to Jiwon again. I’d seen her letters piled up, carefully left on Jiwon’s desk, almost pleading, wrapped in a sense of urgency that hadn’t been there before. The envelopes were marked with messy, looping handwriting, each one a different shade of pastel, as if she thought the colors could soften the words inside.
One day, while Jiwon was out, I saw one of the letters cracked open, its pages spread like a guilty confession. I shouldn’t have looked, but something drew me closer. The words spilled across the page in a tangled rush, as if Hannah had poured herself into it without stopping to breathe, hoping she could somehow undo everything.
Dear Jiwon,
I saw a black-eyed Susan flower today, and it reminded me of you. My father gifted me a book on wildflowers. And I think it reminds me of us. We grow despite the harshness of the sun in places that don’t always seem to accept us. They try to prune the world into a garden of uniformity, but we grow in the cracks. Whenever I think of the days when we first started writing to each other, I think of how I truly bloomed then. And for a long time, I thought that we could refuse to bow to the windstorms, but I’m not like you, I don’t have that resilience.
And so I’m allowing myself to be plucked. I hope you know that I didn’t mean to hurt you and that I didn’t mean for thingsto get so complicated with your brother, if I’m being honest, I don’t even really know what I’m doing anymore. I’m stumbling through my own mistakes, hoping that someone someday will forgive me, I hope that that person is you. Please write back even if it’s just to tell me that you hate me.
Your Hannah.
But Jiwon didn’t respond. She left each letter unread, as if she could see through the ink to the emptiness underneath. Jiwon knew how to let go, how to walk away from something that wasn’t real. And Ienviedher for that.
The silence between Wynter and Hannah grew heavier with each passing day, a cold, unspoken distance settling between them. And with that silence came something unexpected—a strange, vulnerable ache in Wynter’s eyes, something I couldn’t quite define. It was late one evening when I caught it, purely by accident, in a conversation he had with Beck.
I was walking down the hall when I heard their voices, low and muffled through his slightly open door. I hesitated, feeling a pull in my chest, a need to know. So I lingered there, just out of sight, the words filtering through like fragments of a secret.
“I don’t know, Hannah does seem pretty hurt by it, Wyn,” Beck was saying, her tone gentle but firm. “You…really meant something to her, you spent a lot of time with the girl, how could you walk away?”
A bitter chuckle escaped him, sharp and jagged. “Did I, though? Or was I just another thing she thought she could have? Another game?”
There was a pause, thick and heavy, and I could almost hear the way Beck was watching him, like she was trying to see straight into his heart. “I’m confused. Why did you keep hanging out with her for so long, then? You’re usually the last person to be misled by a pretty face.”
His voice softened, but there was an edge to it, something raw and fragile. “Maybe I wanted to believe there was something real there. Maybe I thought she saw something in me that no one else did…maybe I was tired of the guys teasing me for never getting with girls who threw themselves at me. That—I don’t know or maybe I just felt lonely.” He let out a long, uneven breath. “I don’t understand how I didn’t see her for what she was. How was I so blind?”
“You seem pretty hurt,” Beck questioned, then a realization dawned upon her face in careful understanding. “Wait…”
“What?”
Beck’s voice dropped, almost to a whisper, as if she was treading on sacred ground. “I’m getting the sense—I… Wynter did you…do things with her?”
“Beck,” he drawled out in warning.
“Look, I’m not here to judge you, it’s not like I’m a saint either, I’ve been where you are with guys I’ve slept with—perhaps too soon as well. I’m your sister. I’m not here to beat around the bush with you or lie. I’m just here to be there for you. So I want you to know that if you did—well that’sokay. And if you didn’t, well that’s just fine too but I need to know how much of you was in this so I can comprehend the extent of your hurt,” she empathized, her eyes softening.
The silence that followed felt endless, stretching on like the dark expanse of the sea. I held my breath, feeling my own heart twist in a way I didn’t expect. Finally, Wynter’s voice came, barely audible, strained and breaking.
“I…don’t want to talk about it.” He turned his head away. “I don’t even know how to deconstruct it.”
A sudden pang of sadness hit me, something deeper than I could explain. Just then, Beck turned her head and spotted me standing in the shadows. Our eyes met, and I saw a flicker of something in her gaze—understanding, maybe, or a kind offierce protectiveness for Wynter. Without a word, she stood and walked to the door, pulling it shut, closing me out of whatever else might be said.
I stayed there for a few moments, staring at the closed door, feeling a strange ache settle in my chest. I’d wanted him to see her for who she was. I’d wanted him to feel the betrayal, the way I’d felt it. But now that he did, now that I could see the weight of it dragging him down, I wasn’t sure it felt like victory. It felt more like the hollow space left after a storm, where everything is broken and quiet, and nothing is quite the same.
23
Guilty As Sin
PRESENT DAY
I sat down on the floor with Wynter’s diary hidden in a ballet textbook as he, Bae and Cahya gathered around a pepperoni pizza on the kitchen table. My eyes skimmed over the words in Wynter’s diary from summer fifteen— the summer of Hannah. And my heart wrenched, I recall thinking back then that he didn’t care, that it didn’t matter. But his words argued otherwise.
