Page 49

C hildhood was supposed to be simple.

Mine was, once. Before high school. Before that night in the barn.

In elementary school, it was just the three of us—Anne, Karson, and me. Two chubby girls and a pudgy boy with a stutter, united against a world that had already decided we weren't worth much. We'd hide in the library during recess, sharing snacks and making up stories about what we'd be when we grew up. Anne always wanted to be a veterinarian. Karson dreamed of designing video games. I just wanted to bake cakes that made people happy.

It was Anne who loved him first. I'd catch her watching him when he wasn't looking, the way her eyes softened around the edges. And I saw how Karson would blush whenever she laughed, how he'd save the best parts of his lunch for her. They orbited each other like shy planets, never quite colliding.

Then middle school hit, and Karson began to drift away. He was a grade ahead of Anne and me.

"He's going to ask me to the spring dance," Anne whispered to me once, her voice full of hope. "I saw him practicing what to say in the reflection of the library windows."

But he never did. Instead, he asked Jessica Miller—the pretty, thin girl who sat in front of him in Math. I held Anne while she cried in the bathroom stall, her shoulders shaking as she tried to muffle the sound.

Neither of us got asked to the spring dance. We told each other we didn't want to go anyway—we didn't need the humiliation of trying to find dresses that fit or the whispers that would follow us across the dance floor. Instead, we stayed at Anne's house that night, making homemade pizza and watching movies in our pajamas, pretending we weren't checking social media every ten minutes to see the photos being posted.

Things had grown strained between the three of us after that. Karson no longer ate lunch with us, choosing instead to sit with Jessica and her friends. He'd lost weight, his stutter had improved, and it felt as though Anne and I were only good enough when everyone else ignored him—when we were his last option.

Still, he called us late at night when no one else was around, and Anne clung desperately to those crumbs. In the hallways, Karson barely met our eyes, his face flushing with guilt or embarrassment whenever we passed. Anne pretended not to care, but I'd catch her watching him across the cafeteria, something broken in her expression.

The bullying about our weight had grown relentless when we hit seventh grade. Whispers of "Wide Load" and "Double Trouble" followed us through the hallways. Someone left a diet pill brochure in Anne's locker with a drawing of a pig on it. A group of girls mooed when we walked into the locker room for gym class.

We never told our parents. My mom and dad worked so hard to give me everything—the nice house, the best schools, the pretty clothes that never quite fit right. Anne's parents were the same—loving, supportive, and completely unaware of what we endured. They had their own stresses; the last thing we wanted was to become another burden.

And then middle school ended, and Karson moved on to high school.

He stopped answering our calls that summer. His mother told Anne he was "busy with football practice" when she worked up the courage to call his house. By the time Anne and I started high school the following year, Karson might as well have been a stranger.

We saw him that first day of freshman year—or rather, we saw what he'd become. No longer the soft-spoken boy with kind eyes, but a sophomore with broad shoulders and that easy confidence that came from suddenly fitting in. Girls whispered when he walked by. Boys clapped him on the back like they'd been friends forever.

And when he looked at us, he turned the other way.

"He doesn't recognize us," Anne said, her voice small. But the quick aversion of his eyes said enough. He recognized us. He just didn't want to know us anymore.

The first month of high school was brutal. The whispers followed us—"Wide Load walking" when I passed by, "Two-ton Annie" whenever Anne entered a classroom. Someone taped pictures of pigs to our lockers. A group of boys oinked when we walked into the cafeteria. A girl from my math class "accidentally" spilled her soda on my nice shirt.

We retreated further into ourselves, finding sanctuary in a forgotten corner of the school library. No one went there—dusty shelves of outdated encyclopedias made for perfect shields against the world.

"It's okay," Anne would whisper, squeezing my hand under the table when she caught me crying. "We have each other. That's all that matters."

But I saw how the bullying was wearing her down too. The smile that once came so easily now seemed forced, her usual enthusiasm for life dimming a little more each day. She'd grown quieter during lunch, pushing food around her plate instead of sharing silly stories like before.

"You okay?" I asked one afternoon, catching her staring at Karson across the cafeteria.

"Yeah, just tired," she said, brightening immediately with that forced cheerfulness we'd both perfected. "Hey, did you finish that history assignment? I have some ideas for our presentation."

And just like that, she'd redirect the conversation, refusing to dwell on what hurt. We protected each other that way—changing subjects when eyes got watery, making each other laugh when things got too heavy, showing up on each other's doorsteps with ice cream and movies on the worst days without needing to be asked. That was our friendship—a silent agreement to be each other's shield against the world.

It was October of our sophomore year when Karson appeared at our table in the library, startling us both. Anne's face flushed pink immediately, her fingers nervously tucking hair behind her ear—a gesture I'd seen a thousand times when she'd talk about him years before.

"Hey," he said, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot. "Mind if I sit?"

Before I could say anything, Anne pulled out the chair beside her. "Of course not."

I watched her carefully—the hopeful lift of her shoulders, the way her eyes brightened. All the hurt from the previous year compressed into a single moment of renewed hope.

Anne whispered, eyes shining brighter than stars, "This might finally be it, Oak. Maybe he sees something good in me." Her smile was so hopeful, so unbearably fragile, it hurt just to look.

But I stayed silent. Anne rarely smiled anymore.

"There's this party next weekend," Karson said, leaning forward. "You two should come."

I stared at my hands. It had to be a trick. People like us didn't get invited to parties.

"Who else will be there?" I asked quietly, not looking up.

"Everyone." Karson's smile stretched wide, too perfect to be sincere. "But I really want you guys to come. For old times' sake."

I felt Anne's foot tap mine under the table. "We'll think about it," she said, already decided.

When he left, Anne turned to me, eyes shining brighter than I'd seen in months. "Oak, we have to go. This could be our chance."

"Our chance for what?" I whispered, my stomach knotting sharply, nausea clawing upward.

"To not be invisible anymore."

But we were never invisible. We were just background noise to people who only looked up to laugh at us. Anne thought she was finally being seen. And I couldn't crush her more than the world already had.

I should've known better.

I should've screamed.

I tried talking Anne out of going all week. I invented stomach aches, upcoming tests, bad weather forecasts—anything to keep us away from that party. But Anne was transformed by the invitation, suddenly talkative and almost giddy, spending hours debating what to wear.

"What if we get there and it's just another joke?" I asked the night before, voice small in the darkness of her bedroom during our sleepover. "What if no one's even there?"

"What if it's not?" she whispered back, hope trembling in every syllable. "What if this is our chance to start over? What if Karson finally sees me?"

Friday night came. Karson picked us up in his father's car, his smile too wide in the rearview mirror. Anne sat beside me in the backseat, our thighs pressed together, her fingers intertwined with mine. She wore her favorite blue sweater—the one she said made her eyes pop. I'd helped her with her makeup, carefully blending eyeshadow the way we'd practiced from YouTube tutorials.

The outskirts of Diamond Ridge were at the edge of town, where the woods grew thick and houses thinned out. As we drove deeper down the gravel road, my stomach tightened. Where were the other cars? The people? The music?

"I thought you said everyone would be here," I said, hating how small my voice sounded.

"They're meeting us at the barn," Karson answered smoothly. "It's more private there."

Anne squeezed my hand, her eyes bright with excitement. "This is going to be amazing," she whispered, leaning close. "Just like in those movies where they have secret parties in cool places."

We pulled up to an old barn, its weathered wood silver in the moonlight. "Come on, everyone's already inside," Karson said, opening Anne's door. The starstruck look in her eyes gutted me.

Anne stepped out eagerly. I followed slowly, heart hammering against my ribs. Every instinct screamed at me to run. Anne practically bounced out of the car, fixing her hair and straightening her sweater with trembling fingers. "Do I look okay?" she whispered to me, a smile stretching across her face. It was the happiest I'd seen her in months.

Inside the barn, three boys lounged on hay bales, passing a bottle of whiskey between them. I recognized them immediately: Jensen and Michael, the football stars who were seniors, and Tyler, the student body president known for his perfect grades and pretty boy smile.

"Where is everyone?" Anne asked. Her excited smile dimmed as she scanned the empty barn. The only light came from a single bulb hanging from a rafter, casting harsh shadows across the hay-strewn floor.

Jensen's mouth curved into a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "What do you mean?"

"The party," Anne said, her voice smaller now. "Karson said there would be a party."

The three boys exchanged glances, something dark passing between them. Michael snickered. Tyler took a long pull from the whiskey bottle.

"Oh, there's definitely a party," Jensen said, pushing himself off the hay bale and sauntering toward us. His gaze dragged over our bodies with such naked contempt that I instinctively stepped closer to Anne. "You're looking at it," he laughed, raising the bottle in a mock toast. "Welcome to the Annual Pig Roast, ladies."

The air left my lungs in a painful rush as understanding dawned.

Michael explained the rules. Every year, the guys held a contest to see who could bring the "biggest pig" to the barn. The winner got fifty bucks and bragging rights. Karson had won this year's competition by bringing two sophomores—a two-for-one special, they joked.

Anne's face crumpled, her carefully applied makeup suddenly grotesque under the bare bulb hanging from the rafters. Something in her eyes went dark, like a light switching off.

But Karson was already at the door, sliding the heavy wooden bolt into place.

"Nobody's going anywhere," he said, and I didn't recognize him anymore—this stranger wearing the face of the boy who'd once shared his lunch with us when we forgot ours. "We're just getting started."

What came next existed only in jagged shards of memory. Rough hands pinning, claiming, destroying. The taste of whiskey burning down my throat as I choked on my own begging. Anne's screams piercing my soul, then fading to whimpers, then to a silence more devastating than any sound I'd ever heard. The click and flash of a camera immortalizing our shame. Laughter that transformed human boys into something monstrous, something I still heard echoing in my sleep sometimes. The moment I felt my soul detach and hover above, watching as my body became a thing, an object, a conquest—no longer mine, perhaps never to be mine again.

Hours or minutes or centuries later, it ended with them laughing and Michael saying, "You should be grateful men like us would even fuck pigs like you."

They all left, stumbling to their cars, headlights cutting through darkness as they drove away. The barn door remained open, a cruel invitation to freedom that came too late.

Anne and I remained crumpled on the dirt floor like discarded wrappers. We couldn't look at each other. Couldn't speak. The weight of what had happened pressed down on our chests, making it impossible to breathe.

I didn't remember who moved first. One moment we were paralyzed, the next we were stumbling through the woods, hand in hand, unable to bear the thought of going home like this —of our parents seeing us defiled, broken. What would we tell them? How could we explain?

We slept in the woods that night, huddled together under a fallen tree, shivering despite the mild temperature. Every snapping twig jolted us awake, bodies tensed for escape. Every rustling leaf became them coming back to finish what they'd started.

At dawn, we dragged ourselves to a gas station miles away. In the single-stall bathroom, we took turns standing guard while the other tried to wash away the evidence with rough paper towels and pink industrial soap that smelled like chemicals. The water ran pink, then clear, but no matter how hard we scrubbed, we couldn't wash away what had happened.

Anne and I sat on opposite sides of the gas station bathroom, a universe of distance between us. The invisible thread that had always connected us was severed, replaced by something else—a shared horror too vast to acknowledge.

We made up stories to tell our parents—we'd fallen asleep at a friend's house, our phones had died, we were so sorry for worrying them. They were angry, relieved, suspicious, but they believed us because they wanted to. Because we were good girls who never lied to their parents.

As for me, I stepped through my front door into a life that no longer fit. My parents asked about the sleepover and I lied—said it was fun, said I was tired, said everything was fine. Then I locked myself in the bathroom and stood under scalding water until my skin turned raw, scrubbing at stains no one else could see.

For two weeks, Anne and I barely spoke. Not at school, where we still sat together but were miles apart. Not on weekends, when our regular movie nights evaporated without discussion. We texted occasional empty words—"how are you" and "fine" and "talk later"—the language of strangers who used to be something else.

I tried calling her repeatedly one Sunday, but she never picked up. I told myself she needed space. That we'd find our way back to each other eventually. That some wounds just needed time.

I was wrong.

I was researching recipes for a stress-baking session when my phone lit up with her name at midnight. Just seeing it sent my heart racing—she hadn't called in days when we used to be on the phone for hours whether talking or in silence. I nearly dropped the phone twice before answering.

"Anne?" I whispered, afraid my parents would hear.

"Hey, Oak, you there?" Her voice sounded distant.

"Of course I am."

Silence. Then a shaky breath. "Remember when we were little and we'd make those silly wishes on dandelions?" Her voice was soft. "I always wished for the same thing."

"What was it?"

"That we'd always find our way back to each other." She paused. "No matter what."

"Anne, are you okay?" I sat up straighter.

"I just wanted to say that you're the best thing that ever happened to me. You made all the bad stuff bearable."

"Where is this coming from?" I frowned. "It's the middle of the night."

"I found that picture of us from summer camp. The one where we fell in the lake trying to catch frogs." A small laugh. "We were so happy then."

"We'll be happy again," I promised. "Anne, do you want me to come over? I can ? —"

"No, no. I'm fine. Just feeling sentimental tonight. I should go." A pause. "I love you, Oakley."

Before I could respond, the call dropped.

I tried calling back. No answer. I tried again. Still nothing.

I kept calling. Each time rang longer than the last.

Without thinking, I grabbed my mom's car keys from the hook and rushed out of the house in my pajamas. I kept trying to call her as I drove, taking corners too fast.

"Please," I begged to no one and everyone. "Please, please, please."

Streetlights blurred into streaks of yellow through my tears. I was just being paranoid. My gut would be wrong. I was worrying for nothing and Anne would be sitting on her laptop playing the dress up game we loved to play together online.

The car lurched as I veered onto her street, tires screeching in protest.

I screeched to a halt in front of Anne's house, leaving the car door hanging open, keys still in the ignition.

"Oak and Anne against the world, remember?" Her voice, from just last summer, echoed in my head as I pounded on her front door with both fists.

Anne's mother answered, blinking in confusion at the wild-eyed girl on her doorstep at midnight. "Oakley? What's ? —?"

I shoved past her without explanation, nearly knocking her into the wall as I bolted up the stairs. My bare feet slapped against the hardwood, pulse pounding violently behind my eyes. I grabbed the banister and swung myself around the corner, taking the last half-dozen steps in two leaps.

"Anne!" My voice echoed down the hallway as I sprinted to her room. I twisted the knob. Locked. I pounded on the door with both fists, the wood vibrating under the impact. "Anne! Open up!" I threw my shoulder against it, the solid thud reverberating through my bones. Pain shot down my arm, but I backed up and slammed into it again. The frame creaked but held.

Anne's parents scrambled up behind me, her mother clutching her robe closed, her father still fumbling with his glasses.

"Oakley, what on earth ? —"

I whirled around, my hands shaking. "S-Something's wrong with Anne!" I rammed the door again, the impact forcing a grunt from my lungs.

Anne's mother lurched forward, grabbing the doorknob and rattling it violently. "Anne! Anne, honey, open the door!" Her voice rose with each word, escalating into something frantic and primal.

Her father pushed us both aside, positioning himself in front of the door. "Stand back." He tested the knob once more, then backed up three steps. He lunged forward, driving his shoulder into the door. The wood groaned. He backed up again, lifted his foot, and kicked hard next to the handle. The frame splintered but didn't give. He kicked again, harder, his bare heel connecting with a crack that seemed to split the air itself.

We all halted in the doorway when we saw her.

Anne hung from her ceiling light, suspended by the same brown leather belt they had used to bind her wrists that night in the barn. Her bare feet dangled above her desk chair, which lay overturned beneath her. The ceiling fan decorated with butterfly stickers we'd stuck on there in elementary school along with the plastic glow-in-the-dark stars her parents had put on the ceiling for us to stare at.

Her face was already turning blue, her eyes slightly open but seeing nothing. The friendship bracelet from sixth grade dug deeply into her wrist, the frayed blue and green threads stark against her colorless skin. Her sweater twisted loosely around her torso, as if she'd tried to free herself at the last second. Her lips were parted slightly, like she'd been about to tell me one more secret. One last joke. One more I love you.

The scent of Anne's perfume still hung in the air—strawberries mixed with the faint, chemical sweetness of shampoo. She always overdid it before seeing Karson.

I stood there, unable to move, unable to breathe. Time collapsed. The world narrowed to this single, impossible moment—Anne suspended in air, no longer the girl who'd shared her lunch with me every day for ten years, but something vacant and wrong. My limbs turned to stone, my voice trapped in my chest like a bird in a cage.

Anne's mother's scream tore through the room, a primal sound that seemed to come from somewhere beyond human. Her father appeared with a knife, frantically sawing at the belt. Her mother collapsed beside us, stroking Anne's hair and begging her to wake up. "Baby, please. Anne, please. Open your eyes. Please, baby."

Her ribs cracked sharply beneath her father's palms, vibrations echoing through the room with every desperate push. Each compression pleaded for her heart to start.

"Annie, baby, please," he begged between compressions, tears falling onto her still face. "Come back to us. Please don't leave us." One-two-three-four. "You can't go. You can't." One-two-three-four. His voice broke as he continued the rhythm.

His arms worked tirelessly, elbows locked. He didn't stop. If he stopped, it meant she was really gone. One-two-three-four. Please, please. His shoulders heaved with exertion, face contorted in determination and grief. Sweat mingled with his tears, dripping onto her face as he counted, counted, counted, refusing to acknowledge that the daughter beneath his hands was already gone.

I stood rooted to the spot, watching helplessly as her father performed CPR. My tears fell as I witnessed him fight to revive his only child.

But her body was unresponsive.

She was already gone.

EMTs arrived seven minutes later. They tried everything—defibrillator, epinephrine, more compressions. But I already knew. I knew the moment we entered the room. I just couldn't accept it.

"Time of death, twelve thirty-four," one of them finally said.

The room tilted sideways. Sound dulled to a distant roar, like I was underwater. I watched Anne's mother collapse across her daughter's body, her wails rising and falling in waves, her husband kneeling beside her, his face stripped of everything but raw grief.

She died believing she wasn't enough. Because I never told her how much she mattered. Because I didn't stop her from going to that barn. Because I wasn't fast enough that night.

They said suicide was selfish. As if staying behind to suffocate slowly on memories was selfless. Nobody blamed the boys who broke her. Or the world that stayed quiet. They blamed the one who couldn't carry it anymore. Love wasn't a cure. Family wasn't a cure. She didn't want to die—she just didn't want to live with it.

All I could hear was the steady ticking of Anne's bedside clock, marking off seconds of a world that no longer contained her. Tick. Tick. Tick. A relentless countdown that had started without my permission, measuring time in the after-Anne.

They wouldn't let me stay with her. A female officer wrapped me in a shock blanket and led me downstairs, speaking words that didn't register. Someone called my parents. Sirens wailed in the distance, more emergency vehicles arriving too late. The house filled with strangers in uniforms, their voices muffled and distorted like they were speaking underwater.

At some point, I found myself in our kitchen, a mug of untouched tea growing cold between my palms. The world had taken on a strange, glassy quality—everything slightly out of focus, colors too sharp, sounds too hollow. My mother kept touching my shoulder, asking questions I couldn't process. My father paced, his voice cracking as he spoke to someone on the phone. I existed somewhere outside my body, watching this scene play out like a movie I had no part in.

The days that followed existed only in scattered images. The devastating silence of Anne's empty seat at lunch. Her mother's hospitalization after a breakdown at the funeral. The grief counselor who appeared at school, offering platitudes that felt like violence. The prayer vigil I refused to attend. The way students who'd tormented Anne for years suddenly claimed her as a beloved friend.

We were disgusting to them, but not disgusting enough to be taken advantage of.

"Her mother couldn't accept it," my voice barely audible in the darkness of our bedroom. "The grief was too much. Anne's dad had to put her in a psychiatric facility about six months after the funeral. She still lives there."

V's hand rubbed up and down my stomach, resting his forehead on the back of my head.

"They divorced, but he remarried a few years later." My fingers twisted in the sheets. "He and his new wife visit Anne's mom in the facility every week. They take her to Anne's grave on her birthday and holidays. He never abandoned her, his new wife takes care of her too."

I stopped speaking entirely, the world fading to shades of gray, Anne's absence leaving a silence so profound it felt deafening. My parents moved cautiously around me like I was made of glass, watching for signs I might follow Anne. I was assigned a court-ordered therapist who asked questions I answered only with silence.

"She never opens up," the therapist's voice drifted through the door to my parents after our twelfth session. "If she won't talk about what happened, I can't help her."

"I didn't speak for three months after that. The doctors called it traumatic mutism." My eyes stayed fixed on my hands, twisting in my lap as I told V this part of my story for the first time. My throat constricted painfully, each word feeling like it might choke me. "Karson showed up to her funeral." My voice cracked on his name, broken glass in my throat. "He stood at the back, wearing a suit and tie. Like he hadn't...like he wasn't..."

My hands shook at the memory—Karson's ashen face as he watched Anne's casket being lowered into the ground. The sight of him sent bile rushing up my throat, the world spinning violently. I couldn't breathe, couldn't see, my entire body shaking so violently I thought I might shatter into pieces. The panic crushed my chest like I was being buried alive.

Michael and Jensen didn't show up to the funeral. Neither did Tyler. They didn't care about what they had caused. After the service, Karson tried to approach me, but I collapsed at the mere sight of him, panic seizing my lungs until I couldn't breathe. My father carried me to the car while my mother ran interference, unaware of what had really happened, thinking it was just grief breaking me apart.

After Anne's funeral, I couldn't stop vomiting. It was like my body was trying to purge the memory, purge the shame, purge the image of her hanging lifelessly—a ghost I couldn't escape even in sleep.

Each night at exactly twelve thirty-four, I'd stand by the window and whisper apologies into the dark, hoping the wind might carry them to wherever Anne had gone. My wrists bore permanent marks from twisting her bracelet tighter, punishing myself for surviving when she couldn't. The empty weeks bled into emptier months. I developed rituals. Sometimes I'd press my palms against the plaster, imagining Anne on the other side, just out of reach.

Food lost all taste. I stopped eating Anne's favorite foods—strawberry milkshakes, pepperoni pizza, chocolate-covered pretzels—because she couldn't enjoy them anymore. I dug the threads in deeper, rotating them until they carved into my wrist like a brand that I refused to let heal—physical scars to match the invisible ones.

In my head, I talked to Anne constantly.

Every "I should have" became an "I will never"—promises whispered to a ghost who couldn't hear them, regrets carving permanent hollows where her laughter used to live.

I learned to hide these thoughts behind a carefully constructed mask of "I'm fine" for my parents' benefit. But sometimes the mask slipped.

They found me once, scrubbing my skin raw in the shower at two AM, the water long since turned cold. My fingertips were pruned and bleeding, the loofah stained pink as I scoured every inch of myself. My mother pulled me out, crying as she wrapped a towel around my bleeding shoulders. "Talk to us, Oakley," she begged. "Please, just tell us what's happening."

But how could I explain that I was trying to wash away fingerprints only I could see? How could I tell them what happened in that barn without breaking what little remained of their trust in the world?

The nightmares came relentlessly. Sometimes I was back in the barn. Sometimes I was hanging from Anne's light fixture while she watched. Sometimes the roles were reversed, and she was the one finding me too late. I'd wake gasping, sheets soaked with sweat, a scream caught in my throat.

School became impossible. The hallways where those boys still walked free felt like tunnels closing in on me. I'd see them laughing with friends, living their lives as if nothing had happened, while I carried the weight of Anne's absence.

"I begged my parents to let me be homeschooled." My fingers gripped V's forearm tightly. "The thought of going back to that building made me want to?—"

The four years since Anne's death reshaped me entirely. I finished school from home, watched Anne's parents' marriage collapse under the weight of their grief, and spent countless nights jumping at shadows.

V didn't move. Not even to blink. His large arms kept me pressed against the solid wall of his chest. His body ran unnaturally cool, like he existed in a permanent winter that even his leather cut couldn't warm. The black surgical mask that never left his face brushed against my temple as he held me.

When I finished speaking, a heavy silence filled the room. Then, one simple question: "Were you going to do it?"

"... I was," hesitating before I whispered. It was the first time I'd admitted it aloud. "I just couldn't do that to my parents. After watching what happened to Anne's mom..."

V's hands moved from around my waist to my shoulders, turning me to face him. His dark eyes, black as a starless night, bored into mine. People called those eyes empty, soulless, but I recognized the emptiness. It was the same kind I'd carried since that night in the barn.

"If you ever think of leaving me," his voice dropped, raw and dangerous, "death won't stop me from bringing you back."

I almost pulled away. My first instinct was to run—happiness felt like betrayal to Anne's memory.

Until V.

We were both damaged. Both capable of hurting each other in ways we couldn't always recognize. I still flinched sometimes when he moved too quickly. He still watched me like I might disappear if he blinked. Some nights, I still dreamed of running away from him.

But tonight, telling him about Anne felt like the first honest choice I'd made in years—a door I'd opened willingly, without his hand forcing mine.

I sat there in his lap, tears streaming down my face. Without warning, his fingers moved to his mask, pulling it down just enough to expose his lips. He still wore the mask, but he'd reached a point where he refused to kiss me with that barrier between us anymore.

He leaned toward me, and I flinched. Not from him—from the idea of being touched. Four years of my body bracing for harm instead of comfort. I hated that instinct, hated that even with V, my first response was fear.

He paused, observing my hesitation, then pressed his lips gently against my forehead. Our noses brushed as my head tilted back slightly. My body—the one I'd spent years hiding in oversized clothes, the one I'd punished for surviving when Anne didn't—responded to him in ways I never thought possible. His breath warmed my skin. My body responded before my mind could catch up. I remained still as he pressed his lips to mine.

A quiet hum vibrated from his chest. He tilted his head slightly as I parted my lips, his tongue stroking softly against mine. His fingers tangled in my hair, thumb brushing my cheek as he kissed me with unexpected gentleness. I dissolved against him, more tears falling—for Anne, for the girl I used to be, for all the years spent feeling unworthy of touch.

Sometimes I caught myself counting CPR beats when I was anxious. One-two-three-four. I didn't even realize I was doing it until I tasted tears.

I thought healing would feel like joy. It didn't. It felt like betrayal. Like standing in sunlight and wishing it would rain. But if Anne's ghost was still in that room, I hoped she saw what I was trying to become. Not healed. Just still here.

V had shown me exactly who he was—a killer, a monster, a man who lived by his own brutal code. He'd never once lied about what he was. And in return, I'd finally told him my truth, the secret I'd kept buried for four years.

Now I knew what I had to do.

Not to forget. Not to let go. But to live—quietly, fully, carrying Anne with me in ways that honored her memory instead of drowning in it. To bake cakes that made people happy. To find moments of joy without guilt.

Anne's story ended before it should have.

Mine didn't—and I owed her every painful, beautiful moment I had left.

One-two-three-four. Breathe.

One-two-three-four. Live.