“And then there’s the blog. You’d love this part. Turns out I’m an influencer, Chris. A real mover and shaker. So much so that someone—probably Charlotte—hacked Royals Anonymous to ruin Everhart Pack for good. All because I couldn’t let go of being the guy who knows everything about everyone and says nothing. Classic, right?”
I want to laugh, but the lump in my throat is the size of a brick.
“I don’t know what you want from me.” My voice is softer now. “I don’t even know what I want from me. Everyone around me was right. I’m just spinning my wheels. Wasting time until something explodes. Well, good news. Everything exploded.”
A gust of wind rattles the plastic flowers on the next grave over. The crows take off, screaming. I watch them go, then look back at Chris’s headstone.
“I keep waiting for you to tell me what to do,” I admit. “I keep thinking, if you were here, you’d have some plan, or a joke, or a way to make it all make sense. But you’re not here. And nobody’s coming to fix it.”
I reach into my pocket and pull out my phone. I thumb over to Royals Anonymous and scroll, watching the numbers go up on the last post. The whole city is obsessed with us. With Emery and her downfall. With me.
“It’s all noise, Chris. And it’s all mine.”
For a second, I think I hear him—just a flicker of memory, a ghost-echo in the rain.“So shut it off, idiot,”he’d say.“Just shut it off and go do something real.”
I stare at the phone. The battery is at three percent. A clear sign if I’ve ever seen one.
My hands don’t even shake as I delete every single post and meme I’ve ever posted. I delete the blog account right before my phone battery dies.
A weight is lifted from me as the screen goes dark. I smile up at Chris’s headstone. “Thank you, brother.”
I walk over to the river lining the cemetery. The water is brown, restless, and too shallow for secrets but deep enough for this. I wind up and hurl my phone as far as I can.
It arcs, tumbles, splashes. Gone.
I watch the ripples until they fade. Then I turn back to the headstone.
“Guess that’s it.”
No more hiding. No more running. If I fuck this up, at least I’ll know it’s my own fault.
I head back through the cemetery, lighter than when I arrived. As I reach the street, I feel for my phone before remembering it’s gone. No way to call, no way to text. The future is terrifyingly, exhilaratingly blank.
I start walking.
Time to find out what happens when I stop living like a punchline and start living for real.
The nice thing about showing up unannounced at your ex’s place is that it forces everyone to be honest. The downside is, sometimes the honesty is a slow, grinding kind—the kind that makes you wish you’d stayed home and read the comments section instead.
Charlotte’s house is the same kind of old as every house in this district: white-painted brick, four steps up from the sidewalk, with a postage-stamp yard and a tree that’s mostly dead. The storm door is propped open by a stack of mail she’s never bothered to pick up. I guess if you torch your reputation in every Council circle, bills don’t seem as urgent.
I ring the bell, mostly for the pleasure of hearing it echo through the thin walls. Charlotte answers faster than I expect. I guess the spy cams she set up are still working.
“Wyatt Whitlock,” she says, voice slick as butter and twice as likely to clog an artery. “Here to grovel, or just audit my recycling bin for incriminating evidence?”
She looks good. Or, more accurately, she looks curated. There’s no sign of surprise, only the faintest flick of her eyebrow.
“Neither.” I step past her. “I wanted to see if you got what you wanted.”
Charlotte invites me inside. I follow. She closes the door and then leans against it, arms folded, like she intends to keep me here against my will. “You mean destroying the Everhart pack? Oh, sweetie, that was just the icing.”
Her living room is immaculate. Every pillow is fluffed and every bookshelf organized by some private logic. There are no pictures of us. Or of anyone, for that matter. I take the guest chair, the one I always hated, and let the silence bloom.
“I don’t think you care about the icing,” I say. “I think you just wanted out.”
Charlotte sighs like I’m a fool who’s just figured out something remedial. “Of course I wanted out. You think I liked being window dressing at fundraisers? Getting introduced as ‘the omega’ even when I was headlining the event?” Her eyes cut to me, sharp. “It’s the same reason you run that blog, you know. To feel like you exist outside of the script.”
I nod, because she’s not wrong. Even if I’m changing that as of today.
