CHAPTER 8
I couldn’t shake her words. Your father is lying cold in the mortuary, and you’re here acting like the world should stop for you.
They stuck to me like thorns. Every time I blinked, they replayed. I wanted to scream at her, curse her, throw everything she ever confided in me back in her face. But instead, I went quiet. Silence felt safer than saying something I couldn’t take back.
The thing that broke me wasn’t even the insult. It was the fact that it came from Steph. Steph, of all people. My Steph. The girl I thought would stand beside me through anything. The one who had been my anchor when school felt like quicksand.
I remembered the first day we met. It was in class, 100 level, when I was still struggling to figure out how to balance assignments, home, and my own restless
