Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
COVE
I don’t remember opening the Uber app. I don’t remember requesting the ride. I don’t even remember stepping outside.
But suddenly I’m in the backseat of someone’s Prius, hugging my arms to my chest while tears fall soundlessly down my cheeks.
My thighs are trembling. My chest hurts.
Not the kind of hurt that can be fixed with a deep breath—but the kind that feels like something cracked inside my ribs and now every inhale slices me from the inside out.
The driver doesn’t speak. I think I scared him. I think I’m scaring myself.
The world outside blurs past in streaks of neon and holiday lights, but all I can see is her face. The way she looked at me—like I was the worst kind of mistake. Like she saw a ghost.
A ghost with her brother’s eyes.
Her voice echoes over and over, rising in volume until it’s screaming in my skull.
“That’s your cousin. That’s my niece.”
I gag, twisting to the side just in time to avoid ruining the poor guy’s car. I don’t puke, but I want to. My body wants to. My mind is racing to catch up, to piece it all together, but it’s like trying to staple water to a wall.
How did this happen? How the actual fuck did this happen?
He kissed me. He loved me. And I—
No. Don’t say it. Don’t think it.
I clutch my phone in my hand so hard the case creaks. I can’t look at it. Not yet.
Not while everything is still so…raw.
By the time I stumble into my apartment and fumble with the keys, I’m drenched in sweat and shaking like I’m coming down from a fever. My fingers don’t feel like they belong to me. They don’t want to work. My phone finally buzzes, and I jump so hard I drop it.
Everest: I’m here. Whenever you’re ready.
God.
God.
God.
I don’t even know what I feel. But it starts to pour out the second the door shuts behind me. A sound escapes my throat, ugly and broken. Not a sob, not a scream, but something in between. I stagger toward the kitchen counter and brace myself, the granite cool against my palms.
The room tilts. My heart’s racing so fast I feel sick again.
I snatch my phone and hit the contact I’ve avoided for most of my adult life.
Dad.
It rings once.
Twice.
Click.
His voice is groggy and annoyed. “Cove? Do you know what time it is?”
I don’t let him warm up. I don’t even say hello. The words come out like a dam broke in my throat.
“Did you have a sister? Named…named Miranda?”
Silence.
A long, long pause.
Then his voice goes cold. Flat. “She’s dead.”
“No,” I whisper, eyes closing as tears flood them again. “She’s not. I just met her.” My voice breaks. “I just… I’ve been dating her son.”
A beat of silence. Then an explosion.
“Are you fucking kidding me, Cove? What the hell—what the actual hell is wrong with you?”
His voice booms through the speaker and I flinch like he slapped me.
“I didn’t know!” I scream back. “I didn’t know she was your sister. You told me she was dead!”
“She might as well be,” he snarls. “You don’t know that woman. You don’t know the things she did to this family. I cut her off for a reason. And her kid? Her son, you say? You let him crawl into your life?”
“I didn’t know!” I sob. “We didn’t know, Dad. We didn’t grow up together. We don’t even know each other—”
“You do now,” he growls. “And you’d better stay the hell away. I won’t be dragged back into their bullshit. That entire family is toxic. You’re better off without them.”
My legs give out. I slide to the floor, curled up against the cabinet. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why would you hide this?”
“I didn’t think it mattered,” he says, colder now. Resigned. “They’re dead to me. That meant they were dead to you too.”
“They’re not!” I cry. “Everest isn’t—”
But he’s already talking over me.
“You’re not the one who made this mess. I am. Miranda is. But if you think I’m going to come crawling back to that family, think again. Don’t drag me into it, Cove. I want no part of that circus.”
And then he hangs up.
Just like that.
My whole body sags, the air punched out of me by a ghost of a man who’s been lying to me my entire life. I stare at my phone screen, unblinking, until it goes dark.
Then I see it again.
Everest: I’m here. Whenever you’re ready.
The message from Everest sits like a bomb in my hand. It doesn’t tick. It doesn’t count down. It just… waits. And I can’t touch it.
I don’t reply.
Can’t.
Not yet.
I drag myself into the shower and try to scrub the feeling of him off my skin, but it doesn’t work. I still feel him everywhere. In the curve of my spine. The bruises on my thighs. The way my chest rises and falls.
By the next day, I can’t eat.
By the day after, I can’t sleep.
Every time I reach for my phone, I see his name and my stomach flips so hard it feels like I’m on a roller coaster made of razor blades.
I want to talk to him.
But wanting him now feels wrong. Dirty. Like I’m betraying something sacred. Something I didn’t even know I had.
But not wanting him?
That’s worse.
It’s unbearable.
I try to film. I set up the lights, check the camera, and log in. But the second I go live, I know it’s pointless.
The words feel fake in my mouth. My skin doesn’t want to be touched. I don’t want to flirt. I don’t want to tease. I don’t want them.
I want him.
Ten minutes in, I shut it down and pretend it was a tech issue. Anything but the truth.
And the truth is—I’m heartbroken in a way I didn’t know I could be.
Every part of me aches for him. Not just his body, but his laugh. His voice. The way he touches me like I’m real. The way he listens.
I see him in everything.
The leftover coffee he likes.
The hoodie he left in my laundry.
The song that plays in the background while I scroll through my camera roll and accidentally see the photo of us he took the night after laser tag—me in his lap, grinning.
God, I miss him.
I reach for my phone. Almost text him, but I don’t. A new sob wrings out of me and I press my face into a pillow. I don’t even know how long I stay like that.
Eventually, I do the only thing I can think of.
I call Lorna.
She answers on the second ring. “What’s up, baby girl?”
But one sniff from me and she softens instantly.
“Oh no,” she breathes. “What happened?”
I tell her. All of it.
Every horrible, humiliating, heartbreaking piece.
From the forehead kiss to the glass breaking to the vomit to the Uber to the phone call.
I cry so hard I give myself a nosebleed.
She listens. Doesn’t interrupt. Not once. And when I’m finally too empty to say another word, she whispers, “Oh, honey. I’m so, so sorry.”
“I didn’t know,” I rasp. “Neither of us did.”
“You don’t have to explain it to me. You loved him.”
Still do.
“I don’t know what to do.”
“You breathe,” she says softly. “And when you’re ready, you talk to him. You both deserve that much.”
I nod, even though she can’t see me.
“Cove,” she calls my name. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“But it feels wrong,” I whisper.
“Only because they made it that way.”
I let the silence sit between us.
“Do you still want him?” she asks finally.
“Yes,” I breathe.
“Then figure it out. But don’t do it alone.”
My hand shakes as I hang up.
And when I finally fall asleep that night, I dream of Everest.
Of his arms around me.
Of the way he says my name.
Of how safe it felt.
And when I wake up, the final thought is the same one I’ve had every hour since my world fell apart.
Missing him feels wrong. But not missing him?
Feels worse.