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Victoria killed Henry. Let Peter take the fall. Manipulated the truth so thoroughly that the people who used to love her most had no choice but to weaponize their silence, their grief, their pain.

What the hell do you do with that?

And what does someone like me do with the knowledge that maybe she deserved what happened to her?

The weight of that last thought presses into the space behind my ribs. I don’t want to think it. I definitely don’t want to believe it. But it keeps coming back, weaving its way throughout my brain, trying to take root.

What does it say about me that I think I can understand? That I can look at everything she did and stand here, surrounded by fractured truths and broken people, and think: maybe there was no other ending.

The answers don’t live in the evidence bags. They don’t live in the bloodwork or the tox screens or the way the lariat marks curve around a bruised throat. This isn’t something you can reduce to science or a checklist of psychological symptoms. It’s messier. Heavier.

Something I was never trained to carry.

And maybe that’s what’s deconstructing now—me.

The girl who believed enough data could explain anything. The woman who once thought her grief was a solvable equation. She’s splintering beneath the weight of everything she couldn't predict. Because the worst part isn’t the horror of it all or the guilt or even the truth.

It’s realizing that none of it changes anything.

It’s the grey space where all of it lives together.

There is no justice waiting on the other side of this. No redemption either.

Cognitive patterns and behavioral sequences—I get those. They make sense because they make the world make sense. They offer logic and explanation.

But this?

It doesn’t matter how much evidence we’ve cataloged or how many timelines we’ve mapped—none of it accounted for the fact that Baryn would step in front of Emily the moment the ground gave way beneath her.

And love, when it’s that deep and that unwavering, doesn’t pause to weigh outcomes or justify itself. It just moves. It protects. It absorbs the blow before it ever reaches the other party.

Which changes my perception of Baryn entirely. The shield he’s built out of relentless assholery suddenly makes a lot more sense.

And then there’s the other thing. The one that’s been pressing at the back of my mind, nudging, relentless.

Another kind of love.

Yeah, that’s a whole mess of an idea. Especially when it involves me and Theo Grayson. Because nothing about him, or us, or this entire fucked-up situation fits into a tidy equation either.

And still, I don’t think I can stay mad at him for long, being that he’s only been gone for forty-five minutes and I already fucking miss his infuriating face.

I zip the suitcase violently, too fast, catching fabric in the teeth. It sticks halfway, resisting closure. Even my luggage thinks I’m not ready to leave.

And maybe I’m not.

Because underneath all of this there’s still Emily.

Emily, who once braided my hair every morning before class. Who stayed up with me all night after Laurel died, just to make sure I didn’t feel alone. Emily, who checked in with me relentlessly when I was a shell of a human and the worst kind of person to be around. Who never gave up on me when I was at my lowest. Who knows all my gross habits and still calls me her favorite person.

Those memories aren’t theoretical. They’re not stories I tell myself to feel better about who she is now. They’re real. She’s been there for me when there was no one else. My constant. My one fixed point in a world that’s always felt a little off its axis.

I should see her differently now. As someone I don’t recognize. Someone who kept secrets. Someone who crossed a line that never should have been crossed.

And I do see all of that.

But I still see her, too. Beneath the damage and the decisions and the mess she made of everything. Scared. Grief-warped. Trying to survive something she never had the tools to face.

And no matter how hard I try to rewrite her in my head, the version of Emily I have always known and loved doesn’t fade in the slightest.