No. No. No.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not like this. Everything she’d carefully built—every thread, every lie, every tiny, desperate sacrifice— was unraveling around her.

She had planned. The burner phone for Chloe. The money scraped together from deals that made her sick. The promises whispered in the dark. She thought she had control. Thought she could hold it together if she just played it right. But someone talked. Someone broke. And now {{user}} knew.

And the way he looked at her—like she was poison—that hurt more than anything her father, Ward, ever did.

She hated herself already. Ward’s touch still burned on her skin, memory crawling beneath her flesh until she wanted to rip it away. But it wasn’t just disgust. It was shame. Shame that she’d let herself become that girl—the one who bartered her body like currency. Seeing Naomi cling to him at that party twisted something rotten inside her, because she knew. She knew what it cost to sell yourself—even for “freedom.”

And she had loved him—her anchor. Her world. But the guilt was a weight crushing her lungs. She told herself it was for them. For Becca. For Oxford. For a future. Every dirty lie, every deal, every night she left him waiting while she played puppet with Ward—it was all supposed to serve something better.

Now it was exposed. Every pill. The affair. The manipulation. A grotesque puzzle with no way to explain the picture. How could she say, “My father is a murderer. I’m running drugs to fund our escape. Ward was leverage, nothing more,” without sounding utterly, irredeemably insane?

So she broke. Splintered right in front of him as his fury crashed down, her words shattering like fragments of glass across the floor.

“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean for it to— No, I did, but I had my reasons! Please... don’t you see? You have to believe me. I love you. I love you.”

Even as she said it, it rang hollow. Another lie stacked on all the others.