“Yes.” I pull the blanket tighter.
“He was there. Every summer,” I say while allowing my mind to wander to safer spaces. “I met him when I was six, sometime after my parents died. I’m not sure how long I’d been there when he arrived. But he came every summer and some holidays.” The words sit like stones in my throat. “He was—he protected me. From his mother. From the…” I drop my chin to my chest. “The punishments. They were usually easier on me when Valen was there. He saved me from…everything.”
“His mother?” Madi’s eyes are wide. “She did something to you?”
“Terra Stone,” I say tonelessly. “She is—was—” How do I explain Terra? “Evil,” I settle on. “She was evil.”
Even though I know Terra’s dead, her spirit still darkens my soul.
Elle squeezes my hand across the table. Madi does the same on my other side.
“The night I escaped,” I continue, even as flashbacks claw at my mind.
“You have to go, Honeybee.” Valen’s voice is desperate, pleading, scared. “Terra’s planning the exchange. A transfer because she thinks we’re too close.”
Tugging my hands free, I clasp them in my lap and press my nails into my palms, giving me a new pain point to focus on.
“Valen helped me. He planned it all out. For years, he was too scared to tell his aunt what was happening because Terra showed him, every summer, what she could do to me if he said anything, but that summer—that summer, he knew our fear for the future was the lesser of two evils, and he confided in his aunt.”
I close my eyes. Reliving it in the dark feels safer than facing it in the light. “We were supposed to stall. To give his aunt time to get us out of there, but things…happened. When I ran, h-hewas supposed to go back to the grounds, to throw everyone off and ensure no one could track me. He was supposed to meet me at Miriam’s house—she hid me in a secret room.”
My eyes flutter open. They have no context for this story, and my author brain scrambles to make it make sense. “Vivian, she was Valen’s aunt on his dad’s side. Miriam is his aunt on his mother’s side—she’s Terra’s twin. She always looked after me, and she was helping us. But Valen never came back.”
“He abandoned you?” Madi asks, anger making her tone sharp.
“No.” I shake my head. “All these years, I thought he did. I thought that he chose his mother, the cult, that life, over me.” The admission burns. I never wanted to believe it was true, but that intrusive thought has lived rent-free in my mind for years.
Curling my fingers, I allow each nail to dig a little deeper into my palm.
“Last night he told me—” My voice breaks, and I focus all my attention on my hands. “Someone hurt him. They almost killed him. He—he lost all his memories. He doesn’t remember me. He doesn’t remember any of it.”
“Oh, Clover.” Elle’s tears knock over the dam on mine.
“But he called you Honeybee.” Madi frowns. “Is that what he called you when you were kids?”
“Yes,” I whisper, reaching into my pocket, allowing my thumb to trace the tiny wooden bee carving I always have close by. “Some part of him must remember me, but he said he doesn’t recall anything, not even me, and I believe him. I saw it in his eyes. The way he…the way he stared straight through me.” I drop my gaze to my lap. “I— I’m a stranger to him.”
I wipe my eyes with the blanket. “And now he’s here, thanks in part to Roman, I think, and I don’t know what to do with that. I’ve been in love with a ghost, and the real version doesn’t even know who I am.”
The words hang in the air like a confession.
Because that’s what it is.
I’ve been in love with Valen Stone since I was six years old. Through the abuse. Through the escape. Through foster care and college and every failed attempt at dating that never went anywhere because no one was…him.
And now he’s here.
And he’s a stranger.
“Well.” Madi gathers herself, sitting up taller. “That’s incredibly romantic and also the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”
For a moment, no one speaks. We just sit with it—the weight of years lost, the impossibility of what comes next. Then Elle scooches her chair closer to me and rests her head on my shoulder, and I let myself breathe.
I don’t picture boxes or count for survival. I simply inhale for the first time in hours.
As soon as my nervous system regulates to something resembling normal, I laugh.
It comes out wet and broken, but it’s a laugh.
