The wedding dress crinkles and tears around me. The lace is ruined where it caught on the trellis. The beading scratches my skin.
Good.
Let it become exactly what it was. A beautiful prison I almost locked myself into.
I'm done being who everyone else wants me to be.
Even if I have no idea who I am anymore.
The sign for Largo Waters gets closer.
My new omega instincts hum under my skin, unfamiliar and overwhelming. I need my suppressants. Need to get my head straight. I need to get home, and pray that going back doesn't destroy me all over again.
2
JESSICA
The "Welcome to Largo Waters" sign looks exactly the same as it did six years ago. Faded green paint. Cheerful yellow letters. A cartoon oak tree with a face that's supposed to look friendly but looks like it's judging you for every bad decision you've ever made.
Join the club, tree. I'm judging me too.
I slow down as I pass it, my hands still shaking on the wheel. The tulle of my wedding dress has somehow migrated everywhere. There's a piece stuck to the gear shift. Another wrapped around my left ankle. A third has attached itself to the rearview mirror like a sad, deflated ghost.
Melissa's car smells like her perfume. That expensive vanilla and jasmine stuff she started wearing after Callum complimented it once at dinner. I remember thinking it was weird at the time. Why would she care what my fiancé thought of her perfume?
Now I know.
I crack the window and let the autumn air wash through the car, carrying away the scent of betrayal and poor life choices. Mine and hers.
Largo Waters unfolds around me like a postcard from a life I used to live. Lanzarote Street with its brick storefronts and hanging flower baskets. The Bluebird Cafe where Mom and I used to get pancakes every Sunday. The hardware store that's been run by the same family for four generations. The gazebo in the town square where they do summer concerts and Christmas caroling and probably sacrifice goats under the full moon for all I know about what happens in small towns after dark.
Everything looks smaller than I remember. Quieter. More... real.
A woman walking her dog stops dead on the sidewalk as I drive past. I see her mouth fall open. See her reach for her phone.
Right.
I'm driving through my hometown in a ruined wedding dress, mascara streaked down my face, hair half up and half collapsed, behind the wheel of a car that definitely isn't mine.
Everything is fine.
I take the turn onto Thorne Street, and my chest tightens. Three blocks. Two blocks. One.
There it is.
Mom's house sits at the end of the cul-de-sac, a pale blue Victorian with white trim and a wraparound porch. The garden is immaculate, as always. Chrysanthemums in orange and burgundy. Decorative kale in purple and green. A scarecrow wearing one of Dad's old flannel shirts, standing guard over the pumpkins.
I pull into the driveway and turn off the engine.
Silence.
For a long moment, I just sit there. Breathing. Staring at the house where I grew up. The house I ran from six years ago. I try to open the door and realize my dress is caught on something. The gear shift. The seat belt. Possibly the fabric of space andtime itself. I yank and pull and eventually just rip a chunk of tulle free, leaving it behind like a shed skin.
The October air hits me the second I step out. Cool and crisp, carrying the smell of woodsmoke and fallen leaves which my throat tight.
My heels sink into the gravel as I walk toward the house. These stupid shoes. Four-inch stilettos that Callum's mother insisted were "elegant" and "appropriate for a bride." They're also instruments of torture designed by someone who hates women and wants us all to suffer.
I kick them off halfway up the walkway. Leave them lying in the grass like casualties of war.
