Chapter 2

• “I might as well be honest,” she said, her voice lined with poison hidden beneath a velvet laugh. “That night? The wine I gave you yeah, I laced it. Just a little something to loosen you up. Thought I’d be generous and find a couple of brawny men to satisfy that desperate heat of yours. But no, you had to go and ruin everything. You stumbled into some stranger’s room like a damn fool… and just threw yourself at him.”
• My stomach turned violently. I stared at her, hands curling into fists at my sides.
• Vanessa sneered, crossing her arms like she hadn’t just shattered what was left of my reality. “You really think Jason was the one that night?” She let out a breathy, mocking sigh. “He only said that to protect you. Poor, sweet Jason… too soft to let you face the truth.”
• My body went rigid. I couldn’t feel the heat of the afternoon sun anymore. My blood had turned to ice.
• “You drugged me?” I whispered, my voice breaking into something ugly and raw. “You planned this?”
• She rolled her eyes. “God, don’t act so surprised. You’ve always gotten in the way.”
• The rage surged through me like fire. I stepped forward and grabbed her wrist, my grip trembling. “Why would you do this to me? Why now? Haven’t you taken enough?”
• She flinched, but not because she was scared. No, she was calculating eyes darting behind me.
• And then she dropped.
• Like a puppet cut from its strings, she collapsed onto the concrete, letting out a soft gasp of pain. The performance was so precise I might’ve admired it if I hadn’t been too stunned to breathe.
• Behind me, a voice rang out cold, sharp, full of misplaced fury.
• “Ava! What the hell are you doing?”
• I turned, slowly, and there he was.
• Jason.
• His expression was unreadable, his dark eyes narrowed as they flicked between me and the woman now wilting on the ground like a crushed flower.
• “She she slipped,” I stammered, but even I knew how pathetic that sounded.
• He didn’t answer. He brushed past me without a second glance, kneeling beside her like some goddamn knight. “Vanessa… are you okay?”
• She looked up at him, eyes glistening with crocodile tears, her voice trembling just right. “Jason… I didn’t mean for things to get like this. I only ever wanted to protect you both. I was wrong. I know I was wrong…”
• Her body melted into his arms, and I stood there watching the woman who tried to destroy me fall apart in the arms of the man who swore he’d never let anyone hurt me.
• My heart splintered in slow motion.
• “That’s enough,” Jason said gently, helping her into the car like she was made of glass. “I’ll talk to her.”
• I didn’t move. I couldn’t. The ground felt like it might swallow me whole.
• He came back toward me, his face carefully controlled. I couldn’t even look at him. Not after everything I’d just heard.
• “Ava,” he said, and my name sounded wrong in his mouth. “I owe you the truth.”
• And so he gave it.
• He spoke like a man trying to explain away a betrayal, like memories could soften the knife he’d just planted in my back. He told me about our childhood, the bond we shared growing up. How somewhere along the way, he’d fallen in love with her. How guilt had eaten away at him when he realized what she’d done to me. How he hated her for it. And then how he forgave her.
• “I didn’t know you were pregnant,” he said. “Not until much later. I was in shock. I didn’t know how to handle it.”
• He looked at me like he wanted understanding. Like he thought I would still love him.
• But all I could hear was her voice.
• "You stumbled into some stranger’s room like a damn fool."
• So it hadn’t been Jason that night.
• It had been someone else. Someone I didn’t know.
• Or… someone I was never meant to know.
• “I trusted you,” I said quietly, stepping back. “You watched her destroy me and still chose to protect her.”
• He reached out, but I pulled away.
• I wasn’t the girl from before. The girl who waited, hoped, begged for love.
• I was something else now. Harder. Colder.
• And I wasn’t alone.
• The child growing inside me was the product of blood and violence. A mistake, maybe. But mine to protect. Mine to raise.
• In a world like ours, love was just another weapon.
• And I was done being anyone’s target.
• And then he said it.
• Words I thought I’d prepared myself for.
• But nothing could’ve readied me for the sound of them in his voice.
• “Ava… I’m sorry. I can’t marry you. It’s not just about that night or the baby. It’s because I can’t let Vanessa go. And I won’t lie to you or myself about how I feel anymore.”
• I stared at him, the man I’d once chased the world for. My chest tightened, but my heart had already begun to sink before the words even finished leaving his lips.
• I should’ve known. Maybe, deep down, I already did.
• He had been with her for months traveling overseas together, hiding from the chaos back home while I was left behind, trying to make sense of the ruin they both left in their wake. Every call he missed, every excuse he gave… now it all made sense.
• Even when he claimed he was the one who had touched me that night, I believed him because I needed to. Because if that truth crumbled, everything else would go with it.
• But he had never really chosen me.
• He never would.
• “So you knew,” I said, the words hollow, my voice barely a whisper. “You knew it was Vanessa who drugged me? You knew she sent someone to destroy me, to ” I choked. “And instead of telling me, you told me it was you that night… all to protect her?”
• He didn’t deny it.
• Jason just stood there, calm as ever, as if his world hadn't just cracked open.
• “She didn’t mean to,” he said, softly. “She was young. She made a mistake. She regretted it ”
• “And I paid the price.”
• My voice shook, but I didn’t care anymore. I raised my head and met his gaze, searching for the boy I once loved. But he wasn’t there. He’d disappeared a long time ago, replaced by a man too weak to stand between right and wrong.
• “Did you ever think about me?” I asked. “Even for one second did I ever matter?”
• He looked away.
• That silence told me everything I needed to know.
• When he finally reached for me, his fingers brushing mine, something inside me snapped.
• “The sun is too bright here,” he murmured. “Come home with me. We’ll talk ”
• “Don’t touch me.”
• I slapped his hand away like it burned. Maybe it did.
• And then, I laughed.
• God, I laughed.
• It poured out of me in jagged, bitter bursts until it echoed across the street and startled even him. My shoulders shook, and I couldn’t stop, like my mind had finally decided: Screw it. Let the world burn.
• Because my whole life had been a punchline, and I’d just now gotten the joke.
• All those years chasing his shadow, bending over backward to be close to him. I worked my ass off to get into the same university, forced smiles around his family, swallowed the bitterness every time Vanessa was near. And for what?
• So he could look me in the eye and throw me away with a calm apology and a lie wrapped in guilt.
• He didn’t see me.
• Not really.
• And now? I didn’t see him anymore either.
• I gave everything for him.
• I traded in my dreams like they were nothing more than scraps shoving aside my love for the stage just to make him proud, to make myself fit into his world. A world of suits, secrets, and whispered expectations. I forced myself to smile at banquets full of strangers who looked down on me no matter how hard I tried to impress them. I left behind the only people who had ever truly loved me my adoptive parents to return to the Carter Family. To my so-called birthright.
• All for Jason.
• And in the end, all he gave me in return… was her.
• “I can’t let Vanessa down.”
• That was it. That was the line that shattered what was left of my soul.
• Vanessa, who stole everything my identity, my parents, my life… and now, the only man I ever truly loved. She’d taken it all like it was owed to her. Like she was entitled to every piece of me just because she was better at pretending to be pure.
• She was young, they said. Her mistakes could be forgiven.
• But what about mine? What about the mess she left me in the broken heart, the shattered trust… the baby I was carrying without even knowing who the father was?
• Who would take responsibility for my life?
• No one.
• Not Jason.
• Not the family who claimed me.
• Not the man in that hotel room whose face I never saw.
• The scream building in my chest was too big to let out. My hands covered my face as my body shook with the weight of it all. It was too much. I couldn’t breathe.
• I stumbled into the street, not really seeing, not really feeling. My limbs moved without permission, like I wasn’t in my body anymore. I didn’t even notice the lights change, or the cars slowing around me.
• I was just trying to get away from everything, from them, from myself.
• Behind me, I heard Jason’s voice. Heard the scrape of his shoes against the curb as he stepped forward.
• “Ava!”
• And then her voice. Sweet, false, laced with the poison only I could recognize.
• “Jason, where are you going?”
• She stopped him.
• Of course she did.
• And in that second of hesitation… fate made its choice.
• I heard the engine before I felt the impact. A scream pierced the air. Mine? Someone else's? I don’t know.
• All I remember was the sound of metal and bone colliding. The way the world spun as I was thrown into the air like a broken doll. The pain in my belly ripping through me like fire. I hit the ground hard, the taste of blood already in my mouth.
• Voices. Lights. Someone shouting for help.
• “A pregnant woman somebody call an ambulance!”
• I blinked.
• And through the blur, I saw them.
• Jason, frozen on the sidewalk. Vanessa clinging to his sleeve.
• And me, lying in the street, broken and bleeding, alone.
• Something warm trickled down my forehead, slipped past my eyelashes. Blood. My blood.
• The last thing I saw before the world went black was the red of it dripping into my eyes.
• And then… silence.