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“I—” she started.

Cali took a step back. Then another. Like she needed distance. From me. Like being this close to me made it harder to breathe.

An apology caught in my throat. Too late. I’d already said too much. And then she turned and ran. The doors automatically opened as she pushed through them, disappearing into the parking lot.

I stood there for half a second, the weight of what had just happened settling too slowly.

“Did she finally get rid of that creep?” a petite brunette with curls asked, walking past with a clipboard.

I turned.

“She’s been trying to get rid of him for at least an hour.”

The world narrowed because I had been so wrong. Completely. Every word I’d thrown at her came back. I ran after her because I wasn’t letting her walk away again. Not this time. Not without—something. Anything. I rushed through the doors just as she tripped, her movements unsteady.

“Cali—”

Tears tracked down her cheeks. She flinched when I said her name. I’d put that fear in her.

Twenty-Two

Cali

Ihad to get out of there. Conflict crawled under my skin and made everything feel too restricted, too loud. The anger in his eyes. The certainty. The judgment. He’d reached for the exact words that cut deepest. Because I’d heard it before. Not about me at first. About my mom. Then eventually about me.

Whore. Slut. Poor thing. She doesn’t know better. Just like her mother.

The remarks echoed, sharp and unforgiving. He didn’t know. He couldn’t. But my body didn’t care about the difference. Because they sounded too much like every person who had decided my worth before they ever bothered to know me. I spent years proving I was useful—to school, to Jace, to Grandpa—because being needed had always seemed safer than being wanted.

None of it mattered, not when people had already decided who I was. The truth had never saved me before. I didn’t know why I expected it to now.

My legs kept moving, but I barely registered where I was going until my hip bumped into a truck. I stumbled slightly, catching myself as I reached out, my palm landing against wet metal.

Not mine. Of course it wasn’t.

I hadn’t been paying attention. Not to the rows, not to the cars, not to anything except getting away from him—from the weight of his words pressing in on me from every direction. I turned, scanning the lot, trying to orient myself. Trying to breathe. Trying to think. My body remembered before my mind did.

Run.

A sharp, wind-driven sheet of rain needled my skin and soaked through my scrubs in seconds. My hair clung to the side of my face, my braid heavy, water dripping down my spine as I pushed forward. My sneakers squished with each footfall as I jogged to my car.

“Cali, wait!” he yelled, his voice muffled by the storm. He was fifteen years too late. I wasn’t the teenage girl sleeping on strangers’ couches or waking to unfamiliar footsteps outside the bedroom door.

I had Grandpa. I had Jace. People who counted on me.

I couldn’t afford another mistake. Loving Lane Massey had never been safe, not because he would hurt me—because he could reach the parts of me no one else could. Needing someone had always been the fastest way to lose them. I wouldn’t go back there, not physically or emotionally, for anyone. I believed I had found safety once with Brett. He was steady, predictable, and careful in all the ways that felt like security at the time. And look how that turned out.

The bitter laugh and sob that tried to rise together caught somewhere in my chest and twisted instead. Rain and tears blurred together until I couldn’t tell one from the other.

Where—?

There.

My car.

Two rows over, tucked between a truck and a faded minivan. I ran harder, hearing Lane’s feet thud on the wet asphalt.

“Dammit, Cali! Stop running from me.”