The house looked the same, but everything about this moment was different. I leaned against the sleek black car parked in front, my arms crossed as I watched the driveway. The heavy silence of the street was broken only by the distant sound of a plane overhead, but my focus was razor-sharp, fixed on the girl who’d left this place a year ago and was now coming back. Annie Davenport.

I hadn’t seen her since that Halloween night, the night her life spiraled because of me. She didn’t know the half of it. Didn’t know what she was walking into. I told Max to pick her up because I couldn’t trust myself to be the first face she saw. But now that she was minutes away, I felt that familiar tension in my chest—the pull I’d spent years ignoring.

The sound of tires crunching against the gravel snapped me out of my thoughts. The car pulled up, and I saw her.