Chapter 2

The Moretti Escalade was still parked at the curb. Mark, the family's longtime driver, stepped out as soon as he spotted me walking toward the street.

"Miss Carter, I'll take you home."

"No, thank you." I pulled on my coat and headed for the light-rail station two blocks away.

Mark started after me, but someone said something through his earpiece and he stopped. Nico hated surprises, yet he was too busy proving he couldn't be controlled to pay attention to the one walking away from him.

When I got home, I removed the slim gold ring from my finger. Six numbers were etched inside the band, the date Nico and I had first met. I placed it in a small cardboard box with no note, then dragged an old suitcase down from the top shelf of my closet and began clearing him out of my room.

There were four photo-booth pictures from a summer carnival, the battered baseball cap he'd shoved onto my head after winning a Little League game, a brass compass we'd spent an entire night earning tickets for at an arcade, and the vinyl record he'd made for me when he was sixteen. Between the songs, he'd recorded himself talking about places we would go and promises he'd keep.

Every object belonged to an afternoon I'd once been terrified of forgetting.

Nico hadn't always been like this. When we were kids, he'd climbed over two fences during a thunderstorm and sat outside my bedroom window because he knew I hated the sound. Once, when I fell asleep on the school bus, he rode three stops past his own house rather than wake me. The first week he got his license, he drove across Rose Harbor before sunrise because I'd mentioned craving a cinnamon roll from one specific bakery.

Those moments had been real. So had the boy who created them.

But somewhere along the way, Nico had become just as certain that I would forgive anything he did.

My phone lit up again. Celeste had posted an Instagram story from the Moretti Hotel's family suite. Nico's tuxedo jacket, the one with his initials woven into the lining, hung over the arm of a velvet sofa. Two half-empty crystal tumblers sat on the coffee table, and the silver hem of Celeste's dress showed in the corner of the frame.

Her caption read, [He said it wasn't safe for me to go home, so he loaned me the family suite. Looks like somebody still owes me breakfast.]

Comments piled in before the story had been up five minutes.

[Girl, finally!]

[Are you and Nico official now?]

[Someone check on Ivy.]

Two months earlier, I would have locked myself in a bathroom and called Nico until he answered. I would have demanded to know why his jacket was there, listened while he told me I was embarrassing myself, and apologized by the end of the conversation. Now the picture looked less like a secret and more like a performance staged for one specific audience.

I took a screenshot, closed the app, and went back to packing.

My parents came home just before midnight. Mom worked night shifts at the county hospital, and Dad owned a modest auto shop. They had no business with the Morettis and never asked why a line of black SUVs occasionally waited outside our house. Rose Harbor taught people early which questions were safer left alone.

Mom saw the suitcase in the living room and slowed. "Did you and Nico have a fight?"

"No." I handed her the scholarship email on my phone. "I'm going to Seattle. The summer program starts in July, and I can move into the dorm early."

Dad read the email over her shoulder, then looked at me. "Does he know?"

"He'll know when he needs to."

Dad's expression tightened. "The Morettis don't like being the last to know."

"I'm not one of their employees, and I don't need permission to choose a school." My voice remained steady, though saying it aloud made my hands shake. "If Nico cared enough to ask what I wanted, he would already know."

Mom sat beside me and took my hand. She didn't ask whether I was sure I could leave him or remind me how long we'd been together. "You earned this yourself. If it's what you want, then go."

The simple faith in her voice nearly undid me. I swallowed, nodded, and gave Dad the box containing the ring. "Can you give this to whoever Nico sends for me on his birthday?"

"You don't want to give it back yourself?"

"No. I don't want him turning it into one more conversation I have to lose."

That night, I deleted our shared calendar, left the Columbia apartment group Nico had created, and changed my emergency contact from him to my mother. I removed his face from my lock screen and canceled the train pass he'd added to my digital wallet for New York.

When I finished, my room was so quiet I could hear the air conditioner cycling on and off.

[Why doesn't this hurt more?]

The answer came before I could avoid it. Maybe leaving didn't begin at an airport. Maybe it began the moment you stopped making excuses for the person who kept hurting you.