The bravest of us all. Our eyes drift to the fourth seat at my table—Savvy’s spot.
For the next twenty minutes, we sit together in the silence, staring, praying, begging God to fill that chair once again.
Elle breaks first.
“Grey called on our way over here.” Her voice cracks. “They’re keeping her in the coma for at least a week. Maybe two. The swelling in her brain—” She swallows hard. “They said the next seventy-two hours are critical, but they’re only allowing Grey in with her for now. He’ll keep us updated.”
Madi’s fork falls to her plate with a clatter that has her scrambling to pick it up. “She’s going to be fine. Just fine. Savvy’s too stubborn to die on us.”
“I know.” Elle wipes her eyes. “But Grey sounded so…broken. I’ve never heard him like that.”
“He loves her,” I whisper, my chest tightening to the point of pain.
“We all love and need her,” Elle agrees. “Which is why she’ll pull through. She’d never leave us like this.”
I wish I believed that.
But I’ve seen too much to believe in fairy tales. Everyone leaves eventually, and love is not always enough.
“Riley’s in custody,” Elle says after a moment. “They’re charging him with attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, stalking…” She ticks them off on her fingers. “He’s not getting out of this one.”
“Good.” The word hits the air with more venom than I’ve ever shared.
“Grey said they already found evidence that Riley had been planning this for months. He was tracking her movements, just waiting for the perfect moment.” Elle’s face is a shade of white that’s so unnatural it’s scary. “If we hadn’t been at the fair. If Roman hadn’t been watching?—”
“But we were there,” Madi cuts in firmly. “And Savvy’s alive. That’s what matters.”
Silence settles again, heavier this time.
It stretches to the point of being uncomfortable with everything we can’t fix. Elle clears her throat, and I instantly back away from her expression.
She’s desperate to talk about something, anything that won’t make us cry. “So,” she says, her voice carefully light. “Valen’s back?”
Despite everything, the heat crawls up my neck as I nod.
Madi leans forward. “What we don’t know is why he called you Honeybee at the fair. Or why you fainted like you were starring in a romantic comedy when you saw him. Or”—her eyes narrow—“why you’ve been avoiding our calls since then.”
“I haven’t been avoiding?—”
“Puh-lease.” Elle sighs. “We know when you’re hiding.”
One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
This is the trouble with letting people in. Theyreallyknow you.
I have been hiding.
Sure, I’ve told them the sanitized version of Valen, but what I haven’t told them is what we went through together. How do you explain growing up in a cult? How do I tell them about the boy who saved me, the man who forgot me, the ghost who’s been haunting me ever since?
I decide to just dive in. “He—he was my only friend. At Roots of Salvation. The cult.”
Shame. It has a direct connection to my past, unfounded as it may be.
My friends fall very, very still. They know that my parents took me there and died soon after without even a funeral to mourn them and that I’ve written to Valen ever since. But they don’t know what that place did to me, to us.
“The cult,” Madi repeats slowly. It’s a hard thing to wrap your brain around. I lived it, and I still haven’t figured it out.
“That you still have nightmares about,” Elle adds.
