POV: Maya
I left the safe house at two in the afternoon while Maren was resting and Isla was on a call with someone from the Thornline and Liam had gone to meet Jake at the edge of the property.
I told myself I was going back to school to pick up the homework I had missed. That was true. It was not the whole truth.
The whole truth was that I needed to be somewhere that was mine before all of this started. Somewhere that existed in the version of my life where I was just Maya Carter, invisible girl, algebra homework, borrowed peace and quiet. I needed to stand in that version for a little while before I came back to this one.
I walked the forty minutes without telling anyone. My phone had three texts from Liam from the past hour that I had read and not answered, not because I was angry
