I don’t look to see who.
My mother moves first, grabbing my arm hard. “You will not do this here.”
I rip free. “I already did.”
Voices rise. People edge closer. The containment is gone.
“If you’d learned how to keep your legs closed and your mouth shut,” my mother says coldly, “we wouldn’t be standing here humiliating ourselves.”
Griff steps forward immediately, positioning himself between us. “You don’t get to speak to her like that. We’re leaving.”
My mother’s eyes flick to him, sharp and searching. “You knew,” she says. Not asking. Accusing. “Didn’t you, Griffin?”
“She needed someone on her side, and it sure as fuck wasn’t going to be you.” he says evenly.
Knox hasn’t moved, but his eyes flick to Griff for half a second— long enough for the truth to land.
And something in him breaks.
His gaze cuts back to me, and the look there is wrong, cold with realization—because the woman standing in front of him isn’t who he thought she was anymore. His expression stills in a way that’s worse than rage.
This isn’t disappointment.
This isn’t anger.
This is hurt so deep it has nowhere to go but stillness.
Knox doesn’t look at my mother. He doesn’t look at my father. His eyes stay on me, sharp and unblinking, like he’s pinning me in place without touching me, like if he looks away even for a second something inside him will collapse.
“The baby was mine,” he says quietly. “And you chose him.”
My mouth opens.
No sound comes out.
Because what do I say?
Yes, I said it.
No, I didn’t mean it like that.
I’m sorry.
I loved you.
None of it fits.
None of it matters.
The truth is already out there, hanging between us, and nothing I could say now would make it smaller or softer or less lethal.
I nod once.
His eyes drop to my stomach. When he looks back up, whatever softness he still carried for me is gone.
“Sierra,” he calls me, instead of Star. Something he rarely uses.
It guts me.
