felixmaurer870の小説

POV: DaisyMy hands started shaking before my brain caught up to what I was looking at. I sank down onto the closed toilet lid because my legs simply stopped working.A baby.Jace's baby. It was growing inside me while he was off somewhere far from Willow Creek, pretending I'd never existed. While his mother sat in her marble office, completely insulated by her billionaire empire, congratulating herself on a job well done.Breathe, Daisy. Just breathe.I don't know how long I sat there before the paralyzing fear started to shift. It turned into something else—something sharper, steadier, settling low in my chest like a stone dropping to the bottom of a deep well. This baby hadn't done anything wrong. This baby didn't know about forged transcripts, ruthless locker room accusations, or a billionaire family with more money than God and less mercy than the devil.I pressed my hand flat against my stomach. It was still completely flat, giving nothing away."It's just you and me," I whisper

POV: DaisyThe bookstore wasn't the last door that closed on me that week, but it was the one that finally taught me a brutal lesson: stop mentioning Kingston University out loud.After that, I stopped handing over character letters. I started answering every interview question with as few words as possible, praying that silence would shield me where honesty had failed.Three days later, I found the sign. It was a wrinkled sheet of notebook paper taped crookedly in the window of Value Foods, its edges curling and yellowed from the harsh sun. The grocery store sat at the desolate edge of Willow Creek, past the last blinking stoplight, right against the highway. Half its customers were long-haul truckers passing through—strangers who didn't know my face or my alleged crimes.I figured that distance might finally buy me a little room to breathe.***A woman was restocking the cigarette cartons behind the register when I walked in. A faded name tag reading BRENDA was pinned crookedly to a

POV: DaisyThe cab pulled up outside a house I'd known my whole life, porch light already on, my father silhouetted in the doorway before I'd even paid the driver. He didn't say anything when I got out — just crossed the yard in a few long strides and pulled me into a hug that smelled like dish soap and the same aftershave he'd worn since I was a kid. Neither of us spoke until we were inside.My childhood bedroom still had the same paint color, a soft yellow I'd picked out when I was twelve because I thought it looked like sunshine. It didn't look like sunshine anymore. It looked like a room someone had left in a hurry and never quite come back to, even though I was standing right in the middle of it.Willow Creek didn't forget things. That was the trouble with a town this small — everybody's business became everybody's business within about a day and a half, and by the time I'd been home a week, I could feel the shape of my scandal following me down every street like a second shadow.

POV: JaceI did train like I had nothing. That part, at least, wasn't an act. Five a.m. ice sessions, weight room in between classes, back on the ice again after practice until the rink manager kicked me out past ten most nights, running suicides until my legs gave out — because it was the only place in my life where I could make the noise in my head go quiet, even for an hour, even for a shift.I told myself I was building something — a legacy, a name, a life so big and so loud that it would drown out the memory of that hearing room: the long table under fluorescent lights, and the sound of my own voice saying you built everything on a lie.It didn't drown out. It just got quieter at the edges, so I almost couldn't hear it, most days.Almost."You've been off since the hearing," Ethan said, one night after practice, tossing me a water bottle in the empty locker room. Ethan Brooks had been my teammate since freshman year, and he had a way of saying things flat and plain, no dressing t

POV: DaisyI didn't fully remember the walk back from the arena — just the rain, and Ethan's hand steady at my elbow guiding me through it, and then somehow I was standing in my own doorway, staring at a crisp white envelope taped to the door: Immediate Move-Out Notice.I packed my entire life into two duffel bags in under an hour. The whole time, a campus security guard stood in my open doorway, his boots squeaking against the linoleum every time he shifted his weight. He was pretending to look down the hall, but I could see his reflection in the cheap vanity mirror.I didn't blame him. He was just doing his job. Everyone in this building was just doing their job.The housing coordinator had knocked at some point that evening, rain still hammering the window behind me, and handed me that envelope. I don't remember what she said. The guard watched out of the corner of his eye as I folded years of secondhand sweaters into a faded canvas bag that used to belong to my dad.My hands did t

POV: JaceThe door shut behind me, the heavy click of the latch echoing like a gunshot in the quiet corridor. I stood in the hallway for a second too long. My gaze locked onto the dark grain of the wood paneling, staring at the swirling lines as if they could explain the disaster of the last twenty minutes.I had said it. You built everything on a lie.The words still tasted bitter, heavy, and wrong in my mouth. A sickening wave of regret crept down my spine. The words weren't untrue, but they were wrong in the way a weapon is wrong when you use it to execute someone you love.Just twenty minutes ago, my mother had stopped me in this exact hallway, sliding a thick manila folder into my hands."Read it before you go in," Victoria said. Her voice was low, smooth, and even. It was the tone she always used when she wanted an order to sound like protection. "I didn't want you blindsided, Jace. I know how much she means to you."Meant. She had already used the past tense, deciding the outco