Chapter Twenty-One
MILA
The beach was almost empty that morning, with the tide pulled back far enough to leave a long stretch of damp sand gleaming beneath a pale, undecided sky.
The quiet felt different from the constant tension at school.
Here at the shoreline, everything moved slower, untouched by whatever was unraveling back at campus.
Avery walked beside me with her shoes hooked loosely through her fingers, coffee in the other hand, sweatshirt sleeves pulled down over her knuckles. I had mine wrapped the same way. The air carried salt and the faint promise of warmth later in the day.
For a little while, we talked about nothing important.
About how graduation suddenly felt closer than it had any right to.
About housing forms and whether dorm life would feel claustrophobic after growing up with ocean air.
About how strange it would be to live somewhere that snowed.
About how the water always shifted color when the tide changed, as if the whole shoreline had moods.
It felt almost normal. Almost. Normal had become a narrow window we stepped into carefully.
Avery was the one who broke the calm we’d been holding onto.
“There are bags under your eyes. You’re still reliving what happened,” she said quietly, not looking at me.
“Yes.” She didn’t have to clarify she meant Logan. With the mention of the attack, the tension threaded through our fragile peace.
She exhaled slowly. “The timing doesn’t sit right.”
I watched the waves roll in and dissolve against the sand. I knew exactly what she was talking about. We’d both seen her in the hallway, and that fact haunted me. “No. It doesn’t.”
“Elise knew you were alone.”
The words settled between us without heat. They didn’t need it.
“I saw her outside the art room,” I admitted. “She looked right at me. There was no question.”
We walked a few more steps, the waves rolling in and out, crashing against the rocks.
Avery exhaled quietly. “I’m glad I texted Luke.”
I glanced at her.
“I almost didn’t,” she continued. “I told myself you’d be fine. That I was overreacting. But something felt off.”
The words hung between us.
“It makes me sick,” she added quietly, “thinking about what could’ve happened if I hadn’t.”
I stopped walking. The image rose uninvited—Logan looming over me.
His hands on me. “He would have come anyway.” Even as I said it, doubt pressed in.
The timing had been too precise, and Elise had seen me in the art room.
She had to have hung back and seen Avery leave. We started moving again, slower now.
“She didn’t just know you were alone,” Avery said. “She knew Logan wasn’t where he was supposed to be.”
I looked at her fully. “You think she told him not to go to practice?”
“I think she created the opportunity,” Avery replied carefully. “Whether that meant tipping him off or making sure he knew where you were, I don’t believe any of it was accidental.”
A chill traveled down my spine.
“I’m so sorry. I never should have left, because once you were alone,” she continued, “someone was waiting.”
It hadn’t been spontaneous rage. It had been premeditated positioning.
“Rumors only spike when she’s in the room,” Avery added. “Have you noticed that?”
I had. Information surfaced before it should. Details shared privately found their way into the hallways without a visible source. Elise never carried them herself. They simply appeared—already shaped.
We slowed near a stretch of rocks where tide pools reflected the pale sky in fractured pieces.
“It’s not coincidence,” Avery pressed.
It sat heavier than coincidence ever could.
She slowed, gaze fixed on the water. “You knew she came after me when you left,” she began quietly.
“You told me that day in the library, close to when I first came back to Blackwood.”
“I didn’t tell you how far things went.”
Something in her tone got to me.
“When you left without saying anything, I felt abandoned. I didn’t have any answers, and I was so alone,” she continued. “That’s when Elise stopped being subtle.”
I turned toward her fully.
“She would corner me between classes,” Avery said. “Make sure I felt alone despite a crowd, and there were always the people who’d keep her secrets and wouldn’t breathe a word to my brother.”
My stomach twisted. “What did she say?”
“Whatever would hurt the most and rang closest to the truth,” she replied evenly. “That I was background. That I only mattered when you were there. That people tolerated me because I was attached to someone more interesting.”
Anger pressed against my ribs.
“She picked at everything,” Avery continued.
“My clothes. My laugh. My family. She made it sound like observation as she pointed out flaws.” The wind lifted her hair again, but she didn’t brush it away.
“If I reacted, she smiled. If I ignored her, she was relentless and pressed harder. If I walked away, she made sure I heard the last line.”
A cold, focused anger replaced the shock. Elise hadn’t just targeted me. She’d dismantled my friend.
“I started believing it,” she admitted.
The honesty in her voice hit harder than the words themselves.
“I second-guessed everything. The way I talked. The way I stood. Whether anyone actually wanted me around—that part was the hardest to ignore. I’m Chase’s twin, but the guys—they’re his friends. I am just background. Would they even miss me if I was gone?”
My throat constricted.
“She never left proof,” Avery went on. “It was always verbal. Always deniable.”
I had to swallow twice before I could get the words out. “And no one stepped in?”
“She never gave them a reason to.”
We walked a few more steps before she spoke again.
“There were days,” she continued carefully, “when I sat in my car before school and didn’t think I could make myself go inside.”
Tears burned at the backs of my eyes, but I refused to let them fall. Not here. Not when she had already carried more than enough. The ocean filled the silence.
“I felt… small,” she added. “And alone. And tired of fighting something I couldn’t prove.”
That wasn’t about leaving. It was erosion—the kind that makes you want to disappear.
“I didn’t tell the guys,” she continued. “Chase would’ve detonated. And then it would’ve become a war. And I didn’t want the entire school to know what was going on or risk that maybe they wouldn’t care. That maybe she was right.”
“You know that’s not true, Aves.”
My hand curled around her arm, and we paused in our walk.
“Everything she said was designed to make you doubt yourself. That doesn’t make it real.” I stepped closer. “You’re one of the strongest people I know. You’re intelligent and thoughtful, and you see people in a way most of us don’t. I’m lucky you’re my best friend.”
Her breath caught.
“And the guys?” I added softly. “They would never have let you carry that alone.”
She blinked back tears, her small smile unsteady. “At the time, I didn’t feel that way.”
I could see it now—the subtle collapse in her confidence when I returned. The way everyone assumed it had been some boy. The way she deflected.
“She wanted me isolated,” Avery finished. “And for a while, she succeeded.”
A slow, controlled anger moved through me.
Avery’s expression shifted again. “And now Elise has set her sights on Tori. And I just can’t let what happened to me tear someone else down.”
“What’s she saying to Tori?”
“She’s making threats about her dad’s employment. About how fragile things become when someone with enough reach decides to push. About how admissions committees talk. About how scholarship boards get nervous if they hear instability attached to a name.”
That wasn’t gossip. That was coercion.
“She framed it as advice,” Avery continued. “As if she was doing Tori a favor by explaining how the world works.”
I clenched my jaw. “Why didn’t Tori tell anyone?” I had to ask, even though I knew the reason. Tori was originally friends with Elise. We were new. Would we believe her? Or would we turn her out? Elise would play all the angles.
“She didn’t know who to trust,” Avery replied. “If she stayed loyal to us, she risked her family. If she distanced herself, she protected them.”
That was the point. Weaponized uncertainty. The tide crept closer to our feet. “She isolates one person at a time so it never looks collective.”
“And when isolation doesn’t work,” I continued, “she recruits someone else to do her bidding.” Logan.
The attack in the hallway. The physical escalation that made everything else seem secondary.
A chill moved through me that had nothing to do with the wind.
“She manages outcomes before anyone realizes there was a choice.”
Avery glanced at me. “That’s exactly what it feels like.”
The pattern became impossible to ignore once it formed fully. Anonymous harassment. Strategic isolation. Financial intimidation. Information manipulation. Logan deployed when intimidation alone stopped working.
This wasn’t jealousy. It was structural. And that was what made it dangerous. “She’s never been challenged formally.” The realization sat heavily. I wanted to change that.
Avery’s brows lifted slightly. “Formally?”
“She operates in gray space,” I continued. “In places adults dismiss as drama. If it never becomes documented, it’s not real.”
The ocean surged higher, erasing our earlier footprints.
For weeks, I had reacted—to Elise’s threats, to Logan, to the anonymous text, to whispers. Standing there, something shifted. I wasn’t afraid anymore. I was decisive. “If we keep absorbing it quietly, she wins.”
Avery watched me carefully. “So what do we do?”
“We stop it.” The words came without rush.
“How?”
“We gather everything,” I said. “Screenshots. Dates. Times. Any messages Tori still has. Anything you kept. We document it in sequence.”
“And then?”
The idea pressed heavy in my chest. “We approach administration.”
Avery hesitated. “They’ll minimize it.”
“Not if it’s structured,” I replied. “Not if it shows coercion and financial intimidation. Not if it connects the pattern.”
“And the guys.”
“Yeah, we tell the guys,” I said. “But we don’t let this become about Logan and Luke. If it turns into that, it becomes rivalry.” This wasn’t rivalry. It was abuse of influence and straight-up bullying.
Avery nodded slowly. “Tori will be scared.”
“I know.”
She blinked slowly, a shuddered breath leaving her. “I am too.”
“I get that, but we’re all in this together.” Fear wasn’t the same as paralysis.
The tide washed closer, foam curling around our feet before retreating.
“For the first time,” Avery said quietly, “this doesn’t feel reactive.”
“It isn’t.” It felt deliberate.
My phone buzzed in my hand.
Luke: Everything okay?
The simplicity of the message stayed with me. Avery watched me read it. No. Not yet. I typed back slowly. But it will be.
We weren’t waiting to be cornered. This time, we were building a case, going on the offensive. And if Elise had been managing from the shadows—we were about to drag the pattern into light.
Not impulsively. Not emotionally. Deliberately.
When Luke and I promised to choose each other, no matter the cost—this was part of it. Not just surviving pressure. But dismantling the structure behind it.
The tide continued its steady climb. This time, we were the ones moving first.