Chapter 35
TAYLOR
I’m sorry for holding that secret back from you all these years.
I can’t say if I would’ve ever told you because… I don’t know, Audrey. I just don’t fucking know.
I’m getting Gayle’s for dinner. Want me to pick anything up for you?
Can we please talk about this?
Please, Audrey…
She didn’t respond for the rest of the day.
I went to her suite later that night and knocked on the door, but she never opened it.
The silence between us felt heavier than it ever had before—like every unspoken word we’d collected since high school had come back to crush the air from my lungs.
Maybe I should’ve told her sooner. Maybe I should’ve trusted her with the truth before it turned into a wound we’d both have to bleed from. But I’d spent years convincing myself that protecting her meant hiding the worst parts of me, of my family, of us.
And now it felt like it was too late.
I peeled a Post-it note from my notebook and tried to offer a handwritten apology to cover every base I’d already failed to reach.
I debated the closing line for a long time—something different, something deeper—but in the end, I decided it was best to leave things the way they’d always been.
I’m sorry, Audrey.
Take care,
Taylor