Chapter Twenty Three #2
Her face hardens. “Stop what? Telling you the truth? You don’t like the truth, Sierra, because the truth makes you accountable.”
My pulse pounds in my ears.
She leans in, eyes cutting. “You lost your baby and you still couldn’t manage to be grateful for what you had left.”
My whole body goes cold and the room tilts for a second. I stare at her like I don’t recognize her, like she’s a stranger wearing my mother’s face.
“You don’t get to say that,” I manage, voice shaking.
Her smile is small and vicious. “I get to say whatever I want, because I’m the only one who’ll tell you what you need to hear. Everyone else coddles you. Griff coddles you. Your friends coddle you. They all treat you like you’re fragile.”
My throat burns.
“And then you do stupid things,” she continues, “because no one holds you responsible. You think you can float through life and everything will just… fix itself.”
I take a shaky breath. “I’m not floating.”
“You are,” she says, eyes narrowed. “You’re standing on a life that was handed to you, and you’re still acting like you’re owed something.”
My fingers dig into the clutch. My chest feels tight and hot, like I’m holding a scream inside my ribs.
I try to breathe to keep my face neutral.
I try to stay inside the box I’ve lived in my entire life. But the box is cracking.
My mother leans in, her voice low and cutting. “You don’t get to disappear,” she says. “Not after everything you ruined. If people are going to look at you tonight, you’re going to give them something respectable to look at.”
Something in me finally gives.
I turn fully toward her, right there in the middle of the ballroom, the music low, conversations humming just close enough that I know people are listening.
“You want respectable?” My voice rises before I can stop it. “You want me to stand here and smile like this life didn’t cost me everything?”
Her eyes narrow. “Lower your voice.”
“No.” My hands come up, palms open, my whole body vibrating. “I’m done lowering myself for you.”
Heads are turning now. I feel it, the attention, the tightening circle.
“You keep saying Jace saved me,” I say, loud enough that the nearest tables go quiet. “You keep saying my marriage was the one good decision I ever made.”
My mother’s face goes rigid. “Sierra—”
“I married him because he was safe,” I shout. The word rips out of me. “Because he fit your world. Because the baby I lost—”
The room stills.
My chest heaves. I don’t stop.
“—wasn’t his.” My voice breaks, then hardens. “It was Knox’s.”
The ballroom goes dead silent.
Because the doors open and Griff and Knox walk in as my words echo off the walls.
Griff freezes just inside the doorway, his face already tight, already braced, his eyes wide.
Knox is half a step behind him.
He hears it all.
He doesn’t ask me to repeat what I said.
He doesn’t need clarification.
His eyes find me, and the understanding hits him like a physical blow.
The room is staring.
At me.
At him.
Knox’s gaze flicks to Griff. Just once.
His brow creases, a flicker of confusion crossing his face—like something doesn’t line up.
I look up, and the room comes rushing back into focus.
Across the ballroom, Jace stands frozen, white as a sheet, his drink slack in his hand like he forgot it was there.
Sarah stands beside him, frozen, one hand clenched tight at her side, her eyes locked on me like the ground just shifted under her feet.
Someone gasps.
Someone whispers my name.
I don’t look to see who.
My mother moves first, grabbing my arm hard. “You will not do this here.”
I rip free. “I already did.”
Voices rise. People edge closer. The containment is gone.
“If you’d learned how to keep your legs closed and your mouth shut,” my mother says coldly, “we wouldn’t be standing here humiliating ourselves.”
Griff steps forward immediately, positioning himself between us. “You don’t get to speak to her like that. We’re leaving.”
My mother’s eyes flick to him, sharp and searching. “You knew,” she says. Not asking. Accusing. “Didn’t you, Griffin?”
“She needed someone on her side, and it sure as fuck wasn’t going to be you.” he says evenly.
Knox hasn’t moved, but his eyes flick to Griff for half a second— long enough for the truth to land.
And something in him breaks.
His gaze cuts back to me, and the look there is wrong, cold with realization—because the woman standing in front of him isn’t who he thought she was anymore. His expression stills in a way that’s worse than rage.
This isn’t disappointment.
This isn’t anger.
This is hurt so deep it has nowhere to go but stillness.
Knox doesn’t look at my mother. He doesn’t look at my father. His eyes stay on me, sharp and unblinking, like he’s pinning me in place without touching me, like if he looks away even for a second something inside him will collapse.
“The baby was mine,” he says quietly. “And you chose him.”
My mouth opens.
No sound comes out.
Because what do I say?
Yes, I said it.
No, I didn’t mean it like that.
I’m sorry.
I loved you.
None of it fits.
None of it matters.
The truth is already out there, hanging between us, and nothing I could say now would make it smaller or softer or less lethal.
I nod once.
His eyes drop to my stomach. When he looks back up, whatever softness he still carried for me is gone.
“Sierra,” he calls me, instead of Star. Something he rarely uses.
It guts me.
My eyes burn.
“Knox,” I whisper.
He shakes his head once. Sharp. Immediate. Then he turns towards the door.
Griff reaches for him. “Knox—”
Knox jerks free violently. “Don’t touch me.”
Their eyes lock.
“You knew and you didn’t tell me?” Knox says.
Griff just stands there looking at him not knowing what to say. Doesn’t deny it either.
And that’s when it hits Knox, not all at once, but like a slow, brutal compression in his chest. The way Griff is standing. The way he isn’t asking questions and the way his face already looks prepared for damage.
Something I can’t name flickers across Knox’s face. It isn’t rage. Not even close. It’s the same look he used to give me when we were younger, when I said something careless or reckless and he’d just stare at me like I needed to grow up, except this is twisted into something unrecognizable.
This is pain so deep it has nowhere to go.
It drains the tension from his shoulders and leaves something hollow behind.
Knox lets out a short, bitter laugh, looking me in the eyes. “So what was I?”
His eyes cut back to Griff. “Collateral? You are my best friend and you didn’t fucking tell me?”
Griff’s jaw tightens. “It wasn’t my secret to tell.”
Knox stares at him for a long beat, then shakes his head once. Griff reaches for him again, but he steps around him like he’s stepping around something he finds disgusting. “No,” he says quietly. “Don’t.”
My mother finds her voice again, sharp and desperate.
“Griffin, get him out of here.”
But Griffin doesn’t move.
My father takes a step forward, face dark. “This is not the place for family drama.”
Knox doesn’t look at either of them. Instead he looks directly at me.
“You don’t get to stand here and pretend this happened to just you.”
Then his gaze flicks to my mother. There’s something lethal in it. “You’re the reason,” he says, so softly it almost doesn’t register, “she never learned what being loved actually looks like.”
My mother’s face goes white.
My father’s jaw tightens. “Watch your mouth.”
Knox doesn’t even look at him.
Griff steps forward then, finally placing himself between me and them — not blocking me, just there. Solid. Unmoving.
“That’s enough,” Griff says.
My throat tightens so hard it hurts.
“Don’t,” Jace says.
The single word cuts through the noise like a blade.
He steps forward slowly, placing himself just to the side of me, not touching, but his presence is unmistakable. His voice isn’t raised. It doesn’t need to be.
“You don’t get to talk to her like that,” he says, eyes locked on my parents. “Not now. Not ever.”
Silence swallows the room again. Jace looks at me then.
Not angry or accusing.
Just… wrecked in a way that drains the color from his face. He looks like a man who’s been hit and hasn’t felt the pain yet because he hasn’t stopped moving.
“Why would you let me believe in a life that wasn’t real, without knowing the truth?” Jace asks.
The question slices straight through me.
I don’t answer. I don’t know how.
Jace holds my gaze for a beat longer, like he’s trying to memorize the moment before it breaks him completely. Then he turns away, shoulders rigid, stepping back into the crowd without looking at me again.
Behind him, Knox exhales sharply through his nose, like his body is rejecting the moment altogether.
I turn just in time to see the look on his face.
I’ve never seen him look at me like that.
Then he turns and walks out the door without looking back a second time.