Good. That’s the goal.
Remind me, what was the point of this conversation?
Just to make you smile, or hopefully laugh.
Did it work?
Yeah. It did.
This whole picture exchange was stupid. Pointless.
And yet—I laughed.
Actually laughed. The kind that sneaks up on you. The kind that makes you forget—for a second—that everything around you is burning.
I stare at the screen long after her last message, heart finally slowing itsfrantic pace.
For the first time all damn day, the pressure in my chest loosens its grip.
Cross. Thatcher. Jackson. Rorie.
All still there.
Still loud.
But TF’s words landed somewhere quieter. Somewhere buried.
She didn’t try to fix me. Didn’t press. She cracked a joke, tossed me a lifeline, and sat in the dark with me like it wasn’t something that cost her anything.
And that was enough.
What kind of person does that for someone they’ve never met? What kind of friend is she to the people who know her in real life—who get her laughter in person, who get to see her face when she smirks, who get to trace the exact shape of her sarcasm with their own hands?
The question creeps in like fog through a cracked window—quiet and unwelcome.
What if were her?
What if the voice behind the screen—the stranger who gives me peace when the rest of the world feels like it’s closing in?—
is Rorie?
No.
No, it’s not. It can’t be. She wouldn’t do this. Wouldn’t lie.
Would she?
I scrub a hand over my face, hating that the thought came at all. Hating even more that it stuck. Because if TFwasRorie—if this softness, this gentleness, this safe place I keep crawling back to…was her—then maybe we’d be okay. Maybe I’d have known her better before I broke her.
CHAPTER 31
WE KEEP OUR CROWNS
RORIE
Maya!
You’re back from your trip early?
