Chapter 4
Crew
Idon’t think I’m breathing.
She says the word no with her hands, and it’s not the shape of it, not the movement. It’s the way her shoulders collapse like the truth is finally too much for her to carry. Like it’s pressing her into the ground, and no one’s reaching out to lift her.
I want to reach for her. I want to pull her into my arms, but I’m rooted here, useless. A ghost with bones.
I failed her. We failed her, and worse than that, we made her life worse. Drove her to fake her death when we could have been protecting her.
All I can hear is that word looping like a curse.
No.
She didn’t even say it, like she didn’t have the strength to speak the word aloud and could barely muster the strength to say it with her hands.
She’s not okay—not even close. Not since that night, and she never told me… not like I ever gave her the chance.
I want to say I would’ve burned it all down if she told us. That I would have burned him for daring to ever touch her, but I stood beside them. I wore his name like a badge as if it were some sort of legacy. Something other than being a drug addict’s kid.
I watched her flinch, and I liked it. I called her dramatic and loved the way her eyes would shift to blazing anger, even though I knew she would never say anything. I said horrible things, pushing her to the edge when, really, she was dying inside, and no one cared enough to see it.
I didn’t see it. I didn’t want to see it because that would have meant caring about something other than myself.
Maybe Lottie’s right to never forgive me.
Elijah speaks again, his voice cracking, something sharp and raw, like this is all cutting him apart from the inside, but I can barely hear the words he’s saying to her.
He steps toward her, and she backs up.
I should be relieved she won’t let him touch her, that she’s finally protecting herself, but all I can feel is guilt pressing into my lungs like smoke.
“We were always that.” Roman’s words bounce around in my head.
Raised by monsters.
The truth sits heavy in my stomach like lead.
We were bred in rot… in death and hatred, and maybe we didn’t see it, or maybe we refused to. It was easier to look the other way, to believe their power was earned and not stolen. Not built on broken girls, secrets buried deep in money and blood.
The door creaks again, and Archer walks in.
Tall. Silent. Controlled like a loaded gun.
He takes one look at Lottie, then at Roman—pale, torn apart, the IV a leash to keep him tethered here—and something shifts behind Archer’s eyes.
He doesn’t speak. He walks past us all, straight to her.
He stops in front of her, and when she doesn’t look up, his mouth pulls into a frown. Oscar’s watching him too, standing close enough to Lottie that I feel the silent protective message in his stance. That he’ll tear us all apart if we hurt her again.
Archer crouches, brushing his fingers across her cheek like he’s afraid she’ll vanish.
Lottie finally looks at him, her brown eyes fill with tears, and her face shatters.
Just like that—there’s no armor. No forced strength. No wall. Just the girl we once destroyed. The girl I loved too late and ruined, and I can’t take any of it back.
Not the jokes. Not the apathy. Not the part where she begged for help in the silence, and we all pretended not to hear her.
Roman nearly died trying to protect her.
Elijah killed for her.
Oscar protects her.
And Archer saved her.
And me?
Nothing.
I feel my chest cave in. I’m still standing, but it doesn’t feel like I deserve to.
Roman is watching me now. Green eyes watching me shatter in front of everyone.
There’s no blame—just exhaustion. He’s given enough of his life to our mistakes already, and I could never pay him back for the amount of times he’s saved mine.
Putting himself in his father’s way to save my ass when I was doing stupid shit while high.
And Lottie?
She’s got Archer’s hand on her thigh, Oscar’s shoulder brushing against hers, and I’m just here.
The boy who was too blind to see that she was suffering, when I was supposed to be the person who got it, because we were cut from the same cloth. Children of people who chose drugs over us… and yet I still turned to the very thing that made me an orphan to cope with losing her.
“Why?” The words fall out of me before I can catch them, raw and hoarse. “Why did you fake your death?”
Lottie’s shining brown eyes cut to mine, and a horrible keening sound comes from her mouth as she collapses into Archer’s hold. There’s only sound and pain in this room, and it feels like it’s cutting me apart.
I feel frozen in place. I want to move toward her, hold her, say something, anything, but I’m rooted here like a statue built of shame.
“We failed you,” I say quietly, like maybe admitting it will lift the pressure pressing against my chest. “We all did, but I wish you would have spoken to us before you disappeared entirely.”
Roman shifts in his hospital bed, pain flickering in his eyes, but he doesn’t say anything. He looks between all of us with something like hollow resignation on his face.
“She faked her death because of us, Crew. Because we didn’t protect her like we promised.”
“No,” Archer cuts in.
Everyone turns toward him, and he stands, jaw locked, shoulders taut like he’s barely holding himself back. He guides Lottie to Oscar, who takes her willingly into his arms and rubs her back.
“She didn’t fake it.”
“What?” Roman asks, sitting up straighter despite the IV tugging at his arm.
I feel myself shaking. Whatever he’s about to say is about to tear us all apart, and I stand there. Rooted to the spot like a coward.
A ghost with a heartbeat.
“She jumped,” Archer’s voice cracks, his jaw clenches. “Into the ocean. She was going to end it.”
Lottie exhales, like breathing physically hurts, slow and shaking. Her arms wrap around herself, as if she can make her body smaller than her grief. She doesn’t move. Her eyes are on the floor, tears falling silently.
“You’re lying,” Elijah shakes his head in denial. “She faked it. That’s what she told us. That faking her death was the only way out.”
“I found her. The waves dragged her under. Her lips were blue, and she wasn’t breathing when I pulled her out.”
I feel like I’ve been punched, and I can’t get enough air into my lungs, no matter how hard I try.
“You were just going to let us believe you faked it?” Elijah demands. “Let us think you didn’t try to end your life because of everything we’ve done?”
Oscar’s hands move, and I hate myself for not being able to understand him.
“Because it wasn’t your pain to know,” Archer translates for him, “and he’s right. You didn’t deserve half the answers she gave you. Hell, Oscar doesn’t even know.”
Oscar’s eyes narrow, his fingers flying with a renewed urgency.
“I would’ve told you,” Lottie whispers, voice thin and raw from everything that’s happened. “Eventually.”
We watch her hold herself together as she and Oscar have a private conversation with just their hands. And I watch as Oscar’s heart breaks in silence, piece by piece, as he finally learns about everything she’s been through.
“I didn’t want anyone to know,” Lottie finally speaks out loud while still signing. “They cornered me, and all I could think about was that I could never go back there. Could never let him touch me again. I wanted to die, and I didn’t think anyone would care if I did.”
“You thought we wouldn’t care?” Roman asks, sounding almost broken.
“You didn’t care when I was alive,” she fires back with a shrug. “So why would I believe you’d care if I was gone?”
“You didn’t tell us,” Elijah sounds horrified. “You could have told us.”
Lottie laughs, bitter and sharp. “Told you? When? Before or after you all called me an attention-seeker for my silence? Or how about after you locked me in rooms, forcing me to replay that day over and over again. Or when you were his willing puppets?”
My throat burns.
“We didn’t know—”
“You didn’t want to know!” She snaps.
I flinch. We all do.
The room’s silent for a beat, like none of us know what to say or how to fix what we’ve broken.
I swallow hard, but it’s like trying to breathe through wet cement.
“We cared,” I whisper, even though the words feel pathetic the second they hit the air. “I didn’t show it, and I’m sorry. But I cared, Lottie.”
She finally looks at me, and there’s no fury in her face. Hell, that would be easier. I could take her anger. We deserve her anger.
But there’s nothing in her eyes, only exhaustion.
“None of you cared enough to ask me why I was pulling away,” she says, her voice flat and emotionless, and I hate it.
I hate us for making her go back to this.
“You didn’t care enough to stop laughing when I flinched away from your touches.
When I couldn’t look any of you in the eye because you reminded me of them, you might not have meant for it to happen, but I was made a pawn in a game I had no chance of winning because of other people’s choices.
I’m done bleeding for people who wouldn’t do the same for me. ”
Elijah opens his mouth to speak, but Lottie cuts him off.
“Don’t. Don’t stand there and say you didn’t know,” she says, sharper now.
“Don’t you dare. I told you, in a hundred different ways, even if none of them were words.
You all said you knew me…” she sighs. “But you didn’t know me well enough to see how much you were all killing me. ”
Roman shifts in the bed. His face is pale. “If you had told us outright. We would have—”
“Would you?” she snaps, cocking her head mockingly.
“Would you have believed me over him? Over your father? Don’t lie to me, Roman, it won’t gain you any favours.
At least have the decency to own your bullshit.
You wore that name like a sword that you used to cut down anyone you didn’t deem good enough to be worthy of a Valen’s attention. ”
He doesn’t answer. For once, Roman has been shocked silent, and that silence says more than any apology ever could.
My eyes sting. I can’t tell if it’s grief or guilt anymore, or some mutant blend of both that I can feel shredding me from the inside.
Archer pulls Lottie’s hand into his, like he knows she needs this comfort for whatever she’s about to say, and I know it’s going to tear us all apart.
“I didn’t want to die because of what he did,” she says quietly now, her voice almost breaking. “I wanted to die because of what you didn’t do. I was alone after. I realized no one was coming, not even my own parents.”
She lifts her eyes and for the first time I see her—not the girl who vanished, or the girl we built myths around in our heads—but the girl we left behind.
“Archer came,” she adds. “He is the one who found me. Who pulled me out of the waves and brought me back to life. He stayed. He never made me feel like a burden.”
A beat passes.
“I had no one. He was going to make me his wife, and I knew I’d rather be dead than ever feel their hands on me again…”
Thud.
“That’s why I jumped.”
I split clean in half.
My heart breaks.
I stumble back against the wall because we did this. We left her so utterly alone that the only alternative was death.
“I’m sorry,” I say, even though I know it sounds weak to even my ears. Useless. What does sorry even mean when the girl in front of me is splintering again because of our choices?
“So you keep saying,” she mutters. “But I’m not here to appease your guilt.”