LOGINHazel’s POVI barely slept all night. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw two men.One had spent eighteen years searching for me. The other had spent eighteen years raising me.Somewhere between them, I had lost myself. By morning, I already knew what I had to do.I found Oswald in the dinning, a mug of coffee untouched in front of him. He looked up the moment I walked in, as though he'd been expecting me."You're leaving."I nodded."I'll come with you."I shook my head.“I should do this alone,” I told him. “This isn’t about Rebecca Sterling. This is about saying goodbye to the man who raised Hazel Pierce.”He nodded, understanding immediately, and didn’t try to talk me out of it.The detention center was just as lonely as I expected. After signing in and surrendering my phone, an officer led me down a narrow hallway before stopping outside a small visitation room. "You'll have thirty minutes," the officer said before stepping outside.Rivers was already sitting at the table, as I t
Hazel’s POVThe campus didn’t stop celebrating for hours.Students poured out of dorms and into the quad, banners waving, someone’s car blasting music from the parking lot near the rink. I stood at the edge of it all for a while, watching Jaxon get lifted onto his teammates’ shoulders, his grin wide enough that it made my own face hurt from smiling back at him from a distance.It was strange, watching it from outside the chaos instead of inside it for once.A few months ago, this entire campus had felt like a battlefield. The blog, the scandal, the fake relationship that had somehow turned real in the middle of everything else falling apart. Now I stood at the edge of a championship celebration with the weight of an entirely different life sitting on my shoulders.We had both come so far. Further than either of us had any right to expect, given how this had all started.I let myself watch him a little longer before turning back toward the dorms.Sasha was waiting on her bed when I wal
Jaxon’s POVThe locker room felt different before this game than it had before any other.Usually, there was noise, music, trash talk, and someone tapping their stick against the floor out of nervous energy. Today there was just the low hum of guys getting ready in silence, everyone aware of everything that had happened over the past week without anyone saying it out loud. Rivers in custody. Trey was suspended, sitting at home instead of in the locker room with the rest of us. The team that had spent the whole season building toward this game was walking into it cracked down the middle.Coach gathered us before warm-ups, standing in the middle of the room with his hands in his pockets, looking at each of us in turn.“I’m not going to pretend this week hasn’t been hard. Some of you are worried about Trey. Some of you don’t know what to feel about any of it. That’s fair. But here’s what I need you to understand before we walk out on that ice today. Championships aren’t won by the most t
Hazel’s POV“What is happening?” Trey asked again, slower this time, his eyes moving between Oswald’s still expression and Rivers’ stricken one.Nobody answered immediately.“Someone needs to explain this. Right now.”I was the one who finally spoke. “Trey, I’m not Hazel Pierce.”He stared at me like I had said something in a language he didn’t recognize. “What?”“My name isn’t Hazel Pierce.” I gestured at the documents still scattered across the coffee table. “It’s Rebecca Sterling. I’m his daughter.” I nodded toward Oswald. “The girl everyone thought died eighteen years ago.”Trey laughed, short and disbelieving, the kind of laugh that comes out when your brain hasn’t caught up to what your ears just heard. “That’s not… that’s insane. This is some kind of joke.” He turned to Oswald. “Did you put this idea in her head? Is this some kind of manipulation to get to whatever’s left of our family’s money?”“Trey…” I started.“No,” Oswald said calmly, cutting in before I could finish. “I u
Hazel’s POVI didn’t knock when I got to the house.I just walked in, the way I had for almost my entire life, except this time every step felt deliberate. Jaxon waited in the car at my request. This part needed to happen without him standing beside me. Whatever came out of this conversation, I needed to be the one who said it.Rivers was in the living room when I came in, sitting in his usual chair, a glass of wine untouched on the side table beside him. He looked up when he heard the door, and whatever he saw on my face made him go very still.“Hazel.”“Don’t… Please don’t do the concerned voice. Not right now.”He set down the glass he had been holding. “I have been eating for yu to cobe home. Did you see my calls?.”“I’m not here because of your calls.” I crossed the room and set my bag down on the coffee table, pulling out the folder I had been carrying since I left Oswald’s office. “I’m here because I want the truth. Every piece of it, not the version you’ve been managing for ei
Hazel’s POVI kept thinking about who Trey used to be before all of this.It was a strange thing to grieve, considering everything he’d done. But somewhere underneath everything, there had been a version of him I actually liked once. The brother who used to steal my fries at dinner and pretend he wasn’t doing it. The one who showed up to one of my middle school recitals because nobody else could make it.I didn’t know when that person had disappeared, it must have been in college because that was when he got all too absorbed with himself. Either way, he is gone from WildLife now. The school’s IT department had pulled his access during the investigation, and somewhere in the mess of paperwork, my account had finally come back to where it belonged.To me, after I wrote an undertaking never to use it to tarnish any image. Even if I never did tarnish any image. My blog posts were o mostly about rumours, sex and wild life on campus. Yet I graciously signed the undertaking because I missed
Jaxon’s POVIf there was one thing I hated more than losing a match, it was watching Hazel get torn apart by something she didn't do all because of a spoilt princess does like her.Before we faced the Dean for hearing, I overheard Tiffany bragging to her gang about how she is got everything sorted
Jaxon’s POV Hazel didn’t look back once, not even when I called her name the first time. She moved like she was trying to outrun her shadows. I tossed my stick to Johnson and jogged down to catch up with her. She has already been through a lot and I hate to be the reason why she shrinks the more.
Hazel's POV When we left Mr. Reed's office, I didn't believe I could move my legs. The day was as exhausting as I had predicted but I think it got worse after hearing that my fate now lies in my dad's hand. Jaxon didn’t say much in the car as we drove to his apartment, but he never let go of my h
Hazel's POV I slammed the office door behind me and pressed my spine to it, just to keep myself upright. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking, no matter how hard I clenched them, trying too damn hard not to explode.Trey’s voice and my dad's cold stare like he’d already decided I was guilty clung to my







