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“No. I didn’t know how to reach her.”

“She called you?” Dillon slumped onto the wet balcony chair.

God, she’d made a royal mess of things.

“No.” Seren paused. “She drove to Swansea and found me at the barn.”

“What?!”

“You’re a real arsehole when you want to be, Dillon—”

“—she came to Wales?”

“Did you ever consider how you’d make her feel? At least mam and I—Sam, even—we’ve been through it before. But—”

“What did you tell her?”

“Exactly what I was praying for! That you were probably fine. That you’d resurface in a couple of days. That sometimes you just needed a little time.”

Dillon closed her eyes. “What did she say?”

“You need to call her, Dillon. You need to apologize. She’s a really nice girl. She doesn’t deserve this any more than me or mam.”

A breeze had picked up, bringing gooseflesh to Dillon’s arms as she sat, unmoving in her drenched clothes.

How could she begin to apologize? Kameryn would want an explanation. One Dillon didn’t know how to give. She couldn’t even explain her actions to herself.

“I know. I will.”

“I mean it, Dillon. And call mam. Just not tonight. I’ll let her know I talked to you.”

Dillon could tell she was about to hang up.

“Seren?”

Her sister was silent, but hung on, listening.

“Do you think I should throw in the towel?”

It was quiet so long Dillon thought she may have been mistaken, and Seren had already ended the call. But eventually she heard her take a deep breath, before blowing out a long, slow exhale. “I don’t know which is more dangerous: you giving up on your dreams, or trying to see them through.”

It was Dillon’s turn to be silent. She couldn’t answer what she didn’t know.

“I love you, Dillon. Don’t you ever forget that.” And then Seren hung up the phone.

Scene 31

I burrowed deeper into the hood of my sweatshirt, avoiding eye contact with the man across the aisle who kept glancing my direction. In my vanity, I worried he might have recognized me from the plethora ofSand Seekerspromo photos circulating the internet, which had been released a few days earlier when we’d wrapped up shooting in Scotland. But as I shifted to angle my body away from him, I realized, in my rush down the broken escalator to catch the late-night train to London, I’d spilled half my mocha onto my beige leggings.

It wasn’t a great look. Between the coffee stain, the dark circles under my eyes, my hair falling out of its messy bun, and the midnight train ride, it didn’t take much to guess what he thought of me. I half expected him to drop a few coins into my empty coffee cup as he disembarked one stop before Paddington Station.

As the train started moving again, the dark world gliding by outside the foggy windows, I began to wonder if I’d lost my mind.

Everyone from the film production was already home in Los Angeles, taking advantage of the ten-day hiatus before we were due back in the studio. And here I was, traipsing through London in the middle of the night.

Which was nothing, compared to three days earlier, when I’drented a car in Aberdeen, and, despite having never driven on the wrong side of the road—and I saywrongside, because every time I got to a right-hand turn, I assure you, itfeltwrong—made the trip from the northern coast of Scotland to the furthest point of South Wales.That, no doubt, was the beginning of my decline into insanity.

But in fairness, it had been quite a week.