A crack opened in me I couldn’t ignore.
It was the first, fragile return of trust.
Chapter 49
Changing Opinions
Sophie
I wasn’t proud of how long I’d been certain about Ethan Walker. Certainty was comfortable in a small town. Once you decided who someone was, you could stop paying attention. You could recycle the same opinions, pass them along like inherited furniture, never stopping to ask if they still fit.
With Ethan, my certainty had been forged early.
Claire had been in love with him since we were kids. Not the fleeting kind either. The kind that grew quietly, that survived awkward phases and bad haircuts and long summers where nothing much happened except the slow realization that someone mattered more than they should. Everyone had known it. Everyone had teased her about it. Even when she pretended not to care, her eyes had followed him.
So, when he showed his true colors, it broke something in her.
He hadn’t even left dramatically. No shouting, no confrontation. Still young, still restless, still that reckless Walker boy everyone warned their daughters about.
And Claire, already humiliated, had absorbed it quietly.
She’d doubted herself for years. Her judgment. Her worth.
I remembered how long it took to get her to walk down Main Street again. How she avoided certain places because she was convinced people were watching her, measuring her worth against the story they’d already decided on. How humiliation settled into her shoulders, heavy and quiet, every time someone looked at her with pity.
Small towns loved neat endings.
They loved saying Claire had been young and naive. Loved pointing out that Ethan had always been trouble, as if that somehow made what he did inevitable instead of cruel.
Young love didn’t last, they’d said.
And the younger Walker boy? Everyone had known better than to trust him.
Claire hadn’t just been hurt by Ethan. She’d been publicly undone. And the town had nodded along, satisfied to be proven right.
So yes, my opinions had sharpened over the years. Not just because of him alone, but because of Claire too. Because I’d watched what that kind of betrayal did to kind people.
Loyalty, for me, had always been simple. I, protected the ones I loved.
So, when I walked into the Miller house and saw Ethan wearing Emma’s bright pink apron, cooking dinner from one of her old cookbooks with Lily helping, I stopped short in the doorway.
Lily, normally a constant blur of movement, leaned against his shoulder while he read the recipe aloud, calm and focused in a way I wasn’t used to seeing. She trusted him completely.
That was what unsettled me most.
Trust like that wasn’t easy, it was unconscious.
I stood there for a full minute before clearing my throat.
Ethan looked up first, clearly startled. “Hey, Sophie.”
“Hi,” I said, stepping inside. “Claire left some things here yesterday. I came to grab them.”
“They’re on the counter,” he said, nodding toward it.
I picked up the bag easily. It would’ve been simple to leave.
I didn’t.
