Chapter 26
TWENTY-SIX
Ipractically waddle my way through the school, and each step sends a jolt of pain up my side. My breaths come out shallow, tight, like my ribs are caving in on themselves, and this persists no matter how hard I try.
And I’m not even exaggerating.
Yet, I’m still thinking about Kai.
His words loop in my head, and the look in his eyes burns itself into my memory. That was something deeper than anger, something twisted and raw.
I need to understand the full story. It can’t be just about my father running over Wren, although that is horrifying enough.
It’s something I don’t understand yet—but need to.
By the time I reach the bathroom, my hands are shaking.
I shove the door open, and Lilia and Bea’s eyes snap to me immediately.
Lilia moves first, stepping toward me—until she really sees me.
Until her gaze lands on my face, my side, the way I’m holding myself together like I might come apart at any second. She stops dead.
“Oh my god, what happened?” Bea’s voice is filled with so much venom it scares me.
“Please,” I whisper, my throat tightening. “Just help me cover it.”
I can’t take the questions right now. The concern. The way they’ll look at me if I tell them everything. I just need to hide it. Fast.
Lilia doesn’t waste a second. She digs through her bag, pulling out her concealer, and with gentle fingers, starts dabbing it onto my cheek. Her touch is careful, but it still stings, and I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep the tears from spilling over.
The truth sits there, just behind my teeth, pressing against my ribs. I don’t have to say anything.
And yet…
I swallow, fingers tightening against the hem of my shirt. “Someone broke into my house,” I explain.
Lilia’s hand freezes mid-air, the concealer brush hovering just above my skin.
Bea stares at me like I’ve just spoken in a language she doesn’t understand.
“What?” Lilia says first, quiet, careful. Surprisingly so.
Bea on the other hand…
“Are you kidding?” she demands, her eyes darkening into something I can only identify as pure rage.
I shake my head, already regretting saying anything at all.
I should’ve kept my mouth shut.
“Addie.” Lilia’s voice is softer now, and it makes it worse. The concern in it, the careful way she’s looking at me, like she’s afraid I might break if she touches me the wrong way.
I inhale sharply, forcing myself to meet their eyes. “It’s—it’s not the first time.”
Lilia’s breath catches. Bea grips the sink behind her, knuckles going white.
I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to see their reactions. I don’t want them to get involved. But a part of me—some small, battered, exhausted part—knows that lying to them now feels even worse.
“I’ve been stalked. For a while.”
Lilia gasps, shaking her head. “Addie, that’s—” She stops, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
Bea lets out a hollow, empty laugh. “No, actually, I want to know why we’re just finding out about this now?”
I shrug, looking down at my hands, the uneven polish, the way they tremble slightly. “I didn’t want to drag anyone into it.”
“Drag anyone into it?” Bea repeats, incredulous. “Addie, someone broke into your house. You’re already in the middle of it.”
Lilia swallows, and when she speaks again, her voice is quieter. “Have you told anyone else?”
I nod once. “Kai, by force. And Naomi called Liam when it happened so… he knows too.”
Bea lets out another sharp breath, muttering something under her breath. “Of course, those idiots knew before us.”
Lilia reaches out then, hesitating for a second before squeezing my hand. “What did they do?”
I lift my fingers to the deep, angry scar cutting across my face, and Lilia’s eyes widen in horror. “Oh my god, is that from a knife?” Her hand flies to her mouth.
I nod, looking down, unable to meet their eyes.
Bea swears under her breath. “And what happened… here?” She gestures vaguely to the rest of me.
I don’t answer right away. Because I don’t know how to.
“I fell,” I lie, my voice a second away from breaking. “Down the stairs.”
The laugh I force out is brittle, so unlike a laugh, splintering in my throat before it can sound anything close to real. And when I meet Bea’s gaze in the mirror, I know. She doesn’t buy it. Not for a second.
“Who?” Her voice is a demand, not a question.
I swallow, my pulse hammering in my ears. The truth pushes at the edges of my lips, clawing to get out.
“Naomi and I got into an argument,” I sniffle, my voice trembling. “She pushed me.” The words feel surreal even as I say them aloud. I leave out the part about the intruder intentionally. The fewer people who know, the safer everyone will be.
Bea gasps, but it’s Lilia’s reaction that worries me the most. I look away for a split second, and she’s already gone.
“What is she doing?” I ask Bea in a panic.
Bea doesn’t answer. Instead, she crouches slightly, gesturing for me to get on her back.
“Hop on.”
“What?” I blink at her, sure I must’ve misheard.
“Unless you want us to limp our way over there together, come on.”
For a second, I stand there dumbly, my eyes as wide as saucers. Then, with a grimace, I climb onto her back, and she takes off down the hall.
Whatever Lilia is doing, it seems like Bea knows exactly what’s about to go down.
By the time we reach the caféteria, I already regret this. “Put me down,” I whisper, my voice uneven.
Bea slows. “Are you sure?”
I nod. It hurts, but I need to be standing for this. As soon as my feet hit the floor, the pain rockets through me again, but I grit my teeth, offer Bea a grateful but pained smile, and we enter the lunch hall.
Lilia is already there. Already at Naomi’s table. And before I can even call out, before Naomi can even react—
Lilia slaps her.
Hard.
And all hell breaks loose.
Paris
Four years ago
I sit at a crowded dinner table, surrounded by family, friends… other guests I have seen many times before, and yet I still haven’t memorized most of their names.
Partly because I stopped wanting to know after the “guests”’ mother started staying over at night, but also because unlike my sister, I didn’t have to learn them.
She sure does love her guests.
It’s strange how you can be surrounded by people and still feel lonely.
If you would have asked me a few years ago what loneliness is, I would have said what most people think—the absence of people.
I’m only just figuring out that loneliness isn’t being alone, it’s feeling unseen.
It’s the aching realisation that no matter how many voices surround you, no one will ever truly hear you.
In the Brooks house, I am the invisible one. I’m the ghost. And loneliness, eventually, became a familiar. A constant companion whispering that maybe some souls are just meant to walk their paths unloved and uncared for.
My sister, though, everyone loves her. My parents handed her all of the responsibility because in their words, I’m “unfit” to do anything at all. And I suppose, in many ways, they’re right.
I don’t speak. Well, sometimes I can, but I don’t want to. And my parents warned me from the moment they found out that I shouldn’t.
Apparently having a daughter with a stutter is too humiliating for them to handle.
I didn’t used to mind it, but that was before the multitude of times I managed to embarrass myself and my family in social gatherings because of my inability to say anything at certain times, or when I’d get stuck on some letters during important conversations.
Saying one single word shouldn’t be so hard for me when it’s so easy for everyone else. I always wondered why that is, why something so easy for everyone else became so hard for me. Why my mind is constantly at war with my mouth. The words are right there, why do they keep fading?
I’ve tried for years. To control my words, to contort them and shape them. Shift them and move them into wacky, funky orders. All that got me was a couple of strange looks and a mouth wide open with no words coming out of it.
So I stopped trying for a while. Stopped raising my hand, stopped calling out, stopped picking up the phone. The world became quieter and quieter, but inside… inside I screamed.
Because my thoughts are endless, but my mouth rejects them, and it almost feels like a betrayal. Words are a blessing that so many people don’t understand.
You don’t completely realize their importance until you lose them.
To my left is my sister, looking flawless as always.
As radiant as ever. Berlin never needed to try—she could simply smile, and the world would turn its gaze toward her.
People always notice. Even now, my mother’s eyes never leave her, like she’s the only thing in the room worth looking at.
Worth loving. The golden daughter. The sun.
I am not the sun. I am not golden. I am the moon. Reflecting light that was never mine in the first place. I am nothing without her glow, just a dim, cold thing lingering in the background.
I have spent my entire life in her orbit, in the shadows of her brilliance—existing only in the spaces she does not fill. And she fills everything.
She’s the sun, I’m the moon. She’s the fire, and I’m the smoke. Drifting, fading, disappearing long before anyone noticed I was ever there at all.
She tells me how exhausting it is, how heavy the expectations are for her to carry around.
She wants me to pity her. To tell her it’s unfair.
But how can I when I would trade places with her in a heartbeat?
I would take the weight, the expectations, the pressure—because at least it would mean I mattered.
At least it would mean our parents saw me.
But she doesn’t. She never has.
I have never been rejected, never been cast aside. Because that would require a choice. And I was never a choice. I was the extra, the afterthought, the space between the important things.
I’m not the wrong choice; I’m no choice at all.