LOGIN**Epilogue: Three Years Later** **Lily’s POV**The auditorium smelled of floor polish and new paper.I sat in the front row of graduates with the rest of the final-year law students, the black gown heavy on my shoulders and the mortarboard balanced carefully on my head. Three years of lectures, late-night study groups, moot court arguments that left my voice hoarse, and early-morning basketball practices that kept my body honest had led to this single afternoon. My name sat near the top of the program under the list of special awards. The knowledge still felt slightly unreal, as if the girl who had once written desperate sentences in a hotel journal might look up and find that none of this belonged to her.When the dean reached the final announcements, the room quieted.“Overall Best Student — highest academic performance, outstanding peer mentorship, and excellence in sports — Lily Hale.”The applause rose around me in a warm, rolling wave. I stood, smoothed the gown, and walked to
**** Lily P o v The sincerity in his voice made the anger harder to hold. That only made me more defensive. Sincerity had been a tool before. Soft words had been the beginning of doors I later could not close. “Don’t be a demon,” I snapped. “I already said no.” I dropped the shears, wiped my hands on my jeans, and walked back into the building before he could answer. I took the stairs two at a time and shut the apartment door harder than necessary. The sound echoed in the stairwell. Mom was in the sitting room. She looked up from the papers she was sorting and took in my face in one glance—the flushed cheeks, the tight mouth, the way I was still wiping my hands as if something clung to them. “Are you okay, Lily?” she asked quietly. The automatic yes rose first. I almost said it. The old habit of protecting her from the complicated truth still lived close to the surface. Then I remembered the hospital, the pills swallowed in secret, the way she had told me that secrets were the
****Lily’s POV**The next stretch of days arrived quietly and without drama.I had coffee with Kara on the tiny balcony two mornings in a row. We sat with our mugs balanced on the narrow railing and watched the street below while she talked about her course list for Star University. She was excited in a way I hadn’t seen since before everything collapsed—voice brighter, hands moving as she described the campus map and the required electives and the fact that we would finally be in the same place at the same time. I mostly listened. The coffee was average, slightly bitter, the kind that came from the cheap machine in the kitchen. The company was not. For the first time in a long while, being near my sister felt simple instead of heavy. No shared glances full of the old house. No careful silences around the things we still did not name out loud. Just two mugs and the morning light and her voice moving through ordinary plans.Basketball practice came twice that week. I showed up early b
**Lily’s POV**at home I needed air.I pushed open the window in my bedroom and leaned on the sill, letting the cooler breeze move across my face. The building opposite ours was almost identical, close enough that I could see into the windows if the curtains were open. The narrow courtyard between us held a few potted plants and a single bench no one seemed to use. Movement caught my eye.Jax stood on a small balcony directly across from mine, a silver flute raised to his mouth. He played something slow and clean, the notes carrying easily across the space between the buildings—soft, precise, without showiness. For a second I only listened. The music had no right to sound that calm. Then he lowered the flute and looked up.Our eyes met.His widened in clear recognition. The same tall frame, the same dark hair, the same face that had made my body react in the hallway before I shut the reaction down. He lifted one hand and waved, small and uncertain, as if testing whether the distance
**Lily’s POV**I sat at the small desk by the window with my journal open and the city quiet below.The hospital conversation with Mom still sat in my chest like a bruise that had not finished fading. Her words kept returning in the exact tone she had used: *You are not as innocent as you like to act. You participated. You hid.* I didn’t argue with them anymore. The argument had burned itself out on the sofa that afternoon while I cried and finally admitted that the stepfamily had never needed to force the door. They had only needed me to leave it unlocked and to keep the truth of how my body answered them away from the one person who might have closed it. I simply opened to a clean page and wrote the sentence I had been turning over since we left the hospital.*My body is not public.* *It is not for everyone.* *It does not have to answer every time it is wanted.*I underlined the last line twice, pressing the pen hard enough that the paper dented. Then I kept writing—short, uneve
****Lily’s POV**Mom decided we were going to the hospital on a quiet morning when the apartment still smelled of coffee and toast.She didn’t ask me if I felt sick. She didn’t ask me if my cycle had come. She simply stood in the doorway of my room with her bag already on her shoulder and said, “Get dressed. We’re getting you checked.”I knew what she meant.The possibility had been sitting between us since the night everything collapsed—unspoken, heavy, and mine to carry alone until now. I had taken the emergency pills after the worst nights of the reunion, swallowing them in secret with shaking hands in the dark of the guest bathroom or later in the hotel while she and Kara slept. At the time it had felt like the only control I had left. I never told her. I never told anyone. The fear of pregnancy had lived in my body like a second pulse, quiet and constant, even after the pills.The hospital was bright and impersonal. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead. We sat in a waiting area fi







