For a moment after Hazel finished speaking, the room felt like it had been struck by lightning. The air thinned, as if all the oxygen had been sucked out of the space and replaced with shock. Jacob’s eyes bulged in horror, his breath stopping in his throat. The insult Hazel had delivered was not the kind that wounded lightly. It was the kind that shattered illusions. It was the kind that told the truth people spent ten years ignoring.
After the plane crash, Jacob seemed like a different person.
Hazel remembered that day with a clarity that still hurt. One second she was gripping her mother’s hand tightly while the plane cabin rattled violently, the next second she woke in a hospital bed, surrounded by harsh white lights and a stranger crying next to her. Her father’s face had been pale,
