Chapter 87
She keeps going. “And after I have all these stupid dreams of me, him, and a few quiet Sunday mornings – I go back to fixing his PR disasters and pretending like I’m fine with him calling other girls ‘just flings.‘ So, yeah. I guess I’m not as special as I hoped I was.”
My throat tightens. I want to tell her she is special. That she deserves so much more. But-
“…so what are you going to do about it?” I ask, softly.
“Probably keep sleeping with him until we form a soul tie. Isn’t that what the internet girls call it?”
“Tessa…”
“And don’t give me that ‘you deserve better‘ speech. To me, he’s as good as better gets. So let’s just not go there.”
EMILIA
It hurts. God, it hurts to hear her say that.
But I also know exactly what it’s like to love someone who never chooses you.
And I think of Liam, who I can never choose. My chest twists and that wound he left starts stinging again.
So I take a breath and say the only thing I can.
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“…Okay.”
“Can we please talk about this mess now?”
—
I hear a loud thud, like something heavy just hit her desk. Yep – she’s definitely in her home office. Because Tessa, unlike normal human beings, thinks stress is a hobby and work is therapy.
Sometimes, I wonder if she throws herself into work because she’s chasing the stable life her dad never gave her…
Or if it’s just her way of coping – trying to fill the emptiness he left behind when he made her feel like she was never enough.
“What the hell happened?” she snaps. “I swear to God, I’m going to kill that bastard.”
1 pause, chewing on my bottom lip. There’s no easy way to say this. No cute joke to soften the blow.
So I do the hard thing. The real thing.
“I want to file a report,” I say. “For sexual assault.”
Silence.
–
Like scary silence. I can’t even hear her flipping pages anymore. Just this weight hanging between us like thick fog.
“Tess?” I whisper. “You there?”
Her voice finally comes through, small and shaking. “You… he…?”
It’s not even a full sentence.
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But I know her. I’ve been fluent in Tessa for years.
“Yeah,” I say, and my voice doesn’t break. “He did. And for a hot second, I was going to just let it go. Like always. Like how I’ve let everything go. Every shitty thing people have ever done to me. Sweet little Emilia. Quiet. Forgiving. Easy to forget. The perfect pushover.”
The words taste bitter. But God, they’re true.
I press a hand to my chest because it’s starting to ache – not with sadness, but with this deep, pulsing need to finally do something. To not just sit there and swallow the pain like it’s breakfast.
To not be a victim. To stop blaming people for hurting me and start taking responsibility for letting them.
‘You’re what you tolerate,‘ I tell myself. And that hardens my resolve.
“No more,” I say, voice steel–edged now. “Zane made me think I was small. Like I didn’t have the right to speak up or fight back. But screw that. I’m done playing doormat.”
I sniff once and blink back a tear. Just one. It slides down, but I wipe it away quick – not because I’m weak, but because I don’t want to waste another second crying when I could be getting justice.
“I thought about it,” I/continue, quieter now. “About how every time something like this has happened to me, someone else had to save me. Or I’d just… move on. Pretend I wasn’t hurt. Let them win.”
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“But what if I didn’t let him get away with it?” My heart is beating fast now. Not from fear, but fire. “What if I put it on record? Even if he doesn’t go to jail, even if I’m not the first… I can make sure I’m the last.”
“I can make sure the next girl has something. Anything. A paper trail. A warning. Something to dirty his stupid perfect image.”
There’s a soft sound on the other end of the phone. It takes me a second to realise-
Tessa’s crying.
I hear her soft sniffles echo in that big, empty office of hers, and all I want is to hold her tight. Just wrap her in the kind of hug that says I’m here and I’ve got you, even when the whole world feels like it’s falling apart.
And that’s when it hits me
–
every single time I kept my mouth shut, every time I smiled through the pain, I wasn’t just hurting myself.
I was hurting her.
