All the grief I’ve spent my life outrunning slams into me at once—full force, no mercy.There’s no room to think, no place to hide.Just this blinding ache rising in my throat, my ribs caving in like a building under collapse, my vision blurring at the edges like the whole world is tilting.
A soft kiss brushes the side of my head.Barely pressure, barely a touch.But it hits with the force of someone telling me,You don’t have to fall alone.I’ll hold you until you can stand on your own.
I didn’t know how much I needed that until now, someone to be with me—him.Until this moment, while I’m shaking in his arms, where I finally let myself unravel.
“I’m sorry for all your losses,” he murmurs into my hair.“I can’t imagine how this feels, but you’re not alone.Not right now.”
“They could’ve told me,” I whisper.“They should’ve told me.”
Then another memory spikes through me—my father’s voice the night everything cracked.
She ruined everything.
My breath catches, jagged and painful.
“Is this why Dad said that?”My voice breaks.“Is this why he left?Because he found out I wasn’t his?”
“Mara—”
“He left Mom.He remarried.He has children he actually cares about.”Tears burn through my vision again.“I kept waiting for holidays, wondering if he’d ask me to visit.Wondering why it felt like I was always ...wrong.”A broken sob slips out before I can swallow it.“That’s what he meant, Alec.He started his new family because I wasn’t really his.”
Alec pulls me closer like I’m something he refuses to let the world hurt any further.“Tell me what I can do,” he murmurs.“Tell me how to help.”
“You can’t,” I whisper, shaking my head.“No one can.”
But even as I say it, something starts shifting inside me—sadness tightening into something hotter, more volatile.Anger, rising like a flame catching too fast, too strong.
Because they lied to me.They lied to me my whole life.They let me believe this constructed life that wasn’t real.
A spark catches in my lungs.Anger.Betrayal.A clarity that tastes like iron.
“Maybe ...”My voice trembles, but now for a different reason.“Maybe I should call my mom.”
Alec doesn’t stop me.He just watches me with that quiet intensity that feels like it sees straight through my skin.
My hands are shaking so hard I almost drop the phone, but I dial anyway.Rage is the only thing keeping me upright now.
It rings once.
“Lina?”my mother answers, groggy.“Are you okay?Four in the morning is too early to call.They haven’t moved from Lisbon or Mara would’ve?—”
“No.She—Lina—is not okay,” I say.My voice splits down the middle.“And we moved from Lisbon to Seattle two months ago—after the lawyer called with the news that your sister died.”
A gasp.A loud inhale.Then softly she asks, “Mara?”
“You lied to me,” I spit out.“How dare you—how could you not tell me?”
“About?”she asks, in that slippery tone she uses when she’s trying to figure out how much she can avoid admitting.
“Aunt Lina was my?—”
“I’m your mother,” she cuts in fast, defensive, trembling.“She had you, yes, but I loved you.I raised you.I—” Her voice breaks.“When did she—when did Lina die?”
“Mom, why?”My voice cracks like something splitting open.“Why did you lie to me my whole life?”
“Thomas was missing,” she says, crying now.“Our parents would’ve ...God, you don’t know what they would’ve done to her, to you.She was sixteen, Mara.Sixteen.And we didn’t know what would happen if the truth came out.”
I close my eyes as my tears spill again.
