CHASE
FUCK. f**k. f**k.
SLOANE.
I pressed my palms harder against the railing until the wood grain bit into my skin and left red lines.
Brittany being here was fine. Brittany was… fine. She was Marcus’s friend now as much as mine. Victoria’s friend. She existed in this orbit long before I learned to stop wanting her to be the one specific thing she could never be. We’d carved out something smaller and steadier on the other side of that wreckage. Or I thought we had.
But watching her turn that clinical, competent attention toward Sloane—watching Sloane meet it without blinking, without retreating, without giving an inch—
I didn’t know what to do with that.
I didn’t know what to do with most of what had happened in the last four days.
The kitchen this morning. Her back against the is
