Lily Thompson
The storm didn’t vanish overnight, but it shifted.
The headlines about me started to fade. The paparazzi thinned out. And the whispers—though still sharp, still cutting—were quieter now, tucked into corners instead of screamed in my face.
But quieter didn’t mean gone.
Every time I walked into Denzol, I felt eyes on me. Felt people weighing me against my own past, trying to measure if I was worth the air I was breathing in that building.
And the worst part? My brain wouldn’t let me stop replaying the what-ifs.
What if Ryan hadn’t left me all those years ago?
Would I have finished college? Would Isabella and I have struggled the way we did? Would I have been standing here now, the subject of hashtags and headlines, forced to prove myself to people who’d already made up t
