I grabbed my bag and headed for the door. I didn't turn around. I couldn't.
"Go live, Chloe. You have Elara now. She’s your sister—she won’t let you down." I paused, my hand on the cold brass of the knob. "And if you still want me when you've had some experience under your belt... when you've seen what the world has to offer and you still think I'm the best part of it..."
I finally looked back at her. She looked so small in the middle of that expensive room, but her eyes were fierce.
"You know where to find me. I'm not going anywhere. But I'm not going to be the reason you never spread your wings."
I walked out. The click of the door sounded like a gunshot, and for the first time in my life, I felt like the one who’d been hit
Chapter 49: Chloe
I was thinking about what Dr. Aris said three months ago.
“You got the money, the house, the clothes—and you tried to play the role of the recovered. You were acting 'normal' because that's what the world demanded. But you can't build a new life on a foundation of unaddressed trauma.”
I looked down at my hands. They didn’t feel like mine some days. Today was one of those days.
“Why you cry, Godma?”
Six-year-old Lionel cupped my face in his small hands, his thumbs brushing under my eyes just like his momma’s did. He looked like Julian with a dark tan. I hadn’t even realized I was crying. I did that a lot now.
“I’m okay,” I told him, even though I wasn’t. Not the way people meant when they said it. I’d stopped trying to be normal. Stopped pretending nothing affected me. Stopped believing I could just step out of fourteen years and become someone whole overnight.
I kissed his palm. “Just thinking.”
“Does hugging help you stop crying and thinking?”
I laughed. It came out wet. “Yeah, baby. Hugging helps.”
He wrapped his arms around my neck and squeezed. I held on. After a few seconds, he pulled away and ran off tochase fireflies. His sister was upstairs already asleep; she always seemed to have way more energy than him.
I was sitting on the stone bench in the backyard, watching the sky turn purple, thinking about nothing and everything at once.
“You’re crying again,” Elara said, coming outside with a frosted glass of something pink that she handed to me.
“I’m always crying.”
I was in D.C. with Elara while she worked. I’d left Florida and Killian three months ago. I knew we’d eventually separate—especially when he started saying he was too old for me, that I hadn’t experienced enough on my own. He said I needed time to find myself without him there. At first, I thought he was pushing me away, like he’d finally had enough of my chaos. I was mad at him for a long time after he walked out on me.
Now I understand. He wasn’t pushing me away. He was giving me room to breathe.
He wasn’t scared for my safety anymore. I never confirmed it, but he knew I had done something to Arthur and his family. The irony wasn’t lost on me. The day after I left, Olivia and Arthur had warrants put out for their arrest. The police didn’t know what happened that night at the beach house; they only knew that two people connected to a massive fraud and abuse investigation had disappeared. It made them look guilty—like they were on the run.
I hadn’t corrected anyone.
Elara sat down beside me on the bench. She didn’t say anything. She just sipped her drink and waited.
“I booked a flight to Paris for tomorrow,” I said.
She turned to look at me. “Killian said he won’t see me until I’ve been to at least one of the places I told him I wanted to go.”
My chest tightened. “He said that?”
“Yes. And I miss him.” I paused. “So, though I want to stay here with you and be babied, I’m going.”
Elara was quiet for a moment. I reached over and took her hand.
“You know I love you, right?” I said. I hadn’t said those words to anybody but my momma in twenty-five years.
