Total pages in book: 122
Estimated words: 114951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 575(@200wpm)___ 460(@250wpm)___ 383(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 575(@200wpm)___ 460(@250wpm)___ 383(@300wpm)
“I did,” she said, her voice surprisingly calm. She checked another trophy before setting it beside the box. “That was what my legal team advised. Jay’s family was harassing us all through the trial, and we knew they wouldn’t stop once the verdict was reached. If anything, it would be worse.” She paused, shuttering like she was reliving those horrid years. “I changed my number. Georgie and I moved. It doesn’t surprise me that you couldn’t get my information from the school because they knew I had people after me. They were protecting me.” She shrugged. “The whole point was to disappear, and I guess it worked.”
“And you didn’t have social media,” I said. “Or at least, I couldn’t find you if you did.”
She shook her head, wrinkling her nose. “God, no. I still don’t.”
“I looked in the phone book,” I said on a laugh. “The phone book, Ari, in fucking 2009. I spent hours on Google. I paid some scammy guy to try to find you. I even looked for Georgie.”
“We changed our name,” she said, her gaze sliding to mine. “We didn’t want Jay’s last name anymore. So, after the trial, we changed it to my mom’s maiden name.”
“Campbell,” I mused. “I was looking for Ariana Ridley, but she didn’t exist.”
Her smile was tight before falling altogether, and then her eyes were back on her hands. “It’s probably a good thing you didn’t find me. Not like it would have mattered, anyway.”
She dug into the box.
Her words dug into my heart.
She was saying what I’d always assumed, but hoped, I was wrong about. Even if I had found her, she wouldn’t have wanted to see me. She wouldn’t have wanted me back in her life.
Could I blame her?
What was I expecting?
I left her to fight alone. Even if I did think it was the right thing to do, even if I somehow had proof that I would have jeopardized her case… did it matter?
I left.
I’d negated every promise of love and security I’d ever given her.
Why would she give a fuck if I’d tried to find her when the hardest part was over?
My nose stung, chest aching with the pressure mounting against it. So long, I’d wanted to tell her how hard I’d looked for her. And now, I knew that it didn’t matter.
I needed to let it go — to let her go. My time had passed. I’d fucked up my shot with her and I didn’t deserve another.
But now, she knew the truth. It was all there between us. She had the full story.
Maybe, if luck was on my side, she would at least afford me her friendship.
“Ari?”
“Hmm?”
“Can I hug you?”
Her eyes slid to mine, wide and soft and searching.
“I really need to hold you, Ari. Just for a moment. Please.”
There were so many unsaid words in her eyes flicking between mine.
“Just for a moment,” she echoed on a whisper.
I nodded, an unspoken promise to behave, and then I pulled her into me like a lifeline.
My arms enveloped her, the scent of her hair invading my nose as I closed my eyes and wrapped her up tight. I couldn’t pull her in enough. I couldn’t get close enough. I held her with the longing of two decades and the regret of one decision that had altered both our lives forever.
She was right.
It wasn’t my decision to make alone.
I’d acted like a fucking saint, sacrificing us at the altar like I’d be regarded a hero in the end.
Instead, I’d killed us — our youth, our innocence, our hope, our love.
The blood was on my hands even still.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered into her hair. “I shouldn’t have left. I was wrong. You deserved better. You deserved me staying and being there with you through all of it.”
Her fingers curled in my hoodie, knuckles grazing my back as she buried her head deeper into my chest.
Tears flooded my eyes, nostrils flaring, the truth gutting me like a fish.
But I held strong, sniffing my emotion back and making a new vow to myself, and to her, to be her friend now. I couldn’t change the past. I couldn’t rewrite what happened.
I only had now, and I would make the best of it.
“I promise to leave it alone now. I won’t keep trying to revive something I know is dead.” I swallowed, pulling back just enough to press my lips to her forehead. I squeezed my eyes shut as she let out a shaky breath at the contact. “Friends, Ari. That’s all I want. Just let me be your friend.”
Another squeeze of her hands at my back was her only reply.
The First Crack
Ariana
2017
It was an accident, the first time I saw Shane on my television after that night he found me in Boston.
I was a newlywed, happy as a clam as I sat cross-legged on the floor of my new bedroom and unpacked boxes of clothes, the two-carat diamond ring glittering on my finger. 2013 felt like a lifetime ago. Since then, I’d met Nathan, fallen madly in love, been engaged and married and was now moving into our first house together.