LOGINEvelyn's POVShe stopped suddenly.The sentence remained unfinished.The fire continued popping softly.I stared into the flames.Maddie stared at me.Several seconds passed.Then she finally spoke.“Evelyn.”“Mm?”“You do realize I just spent the last five minutes talking, right?”“Mm-hmm.”The answer left my mouth automatically.The moment it did, I knew I had made a mistake.The campground suddenly seemed very quiet.Maddie didn't say anything.Didn't move.Didn't even blink.And somehow that silence felt far more dangerous than any lecture she could have delivered.I tried waiting it out.That strategy failed immediately.After several painfully long minutes, I finally accepted the fact that Maddie was genuinely annoyed.“I'm sorry,” I said quickly, sitting up straighter. “I was listening. Mostly. Kind of. I mean, I heard everything except maybe the last—”“Okay.”Her tone was calm.Too calm.Which was never a good sign.“Really, I'm sorry.”“That's not actually the problem.”I fr
Evelyn's POVShe sighed wistfully and stared into the fire.“Honestly, though, this one was annoyingly close to my type.”“Uh-oh.”“I know.”The disappointment in her voice sounded almost genuine.“He had the whole package. Broad shoulders, tiny waist, legs that should probably be regulated by federal law, an eight-pack that looked photoshopped even in person, and one of those faces that belong in an Abercrombie campaign where some suspiciously attractive college student is smiling while holding a football for absolutely no reason.”I laughed despite myself.“That's very specific.”“Because that's exactly what he looked like.”She pointed her marshmallow stick toward me again.“And the worst part was that he knew it.”“Dangerous.”“Extremely.”Maddie shook her head.“He was nineteen.”“Ah.”“Exactly.”That single syllable carried all the tragedy necessary.“Maybe it's because he was so young,” she continued, “but he was unbelievably stupid, and you know how much I hate stupid men. A b
Evelyn's POVMaddie raised one eyebrow.I immediately corrected myself.“Fine. Even if I am thinking about him, it's only a tiny amount.”Her other eyebrow joined the first one.“An incredibly tiny amount,” I insisted.“Tiny.”“Microscopic.”“Practically undetectable.”Maddie nodded solemnly.“Like the Grand Canyon.”“Exactly.”She pointed at me.“That's not helping your case.”I groaned and dragged both hands down my face.“Okay,” I said, finally surrendering a little. “Maybe I've been thinking about him slightly more than a completely healthy person should.”“Slightly.”“Yes.”“The man whose messages you've reread enough times to qualify as literature?”I ignored her.“The point is,” I continued firmly, “I've decided this is a bad habit and I'm going to fix it.”Maddie looked delighted.Which should've been my first warning sign.“Really?”“Yes.”“No more Julian?”“No more Julian.”“No more Lemon?”“No more Lemon.”“No more checking Instagram to see whether somebody's posted a suspi
Evelyn's POVI had already lost count of how many times this had happened, but somehow Julian and I had managed to stumble into another cold war.For days, I ignored every phone call he made. Every message he sent remained unread or unanswered. And because Julian Hawthorne possessed the kind of persistence that could probably be weaponized under the right circumstances, he naturally attempted several carefully engineered “coincidental” encounters, all of which failed because I had spent the past week leaving home before sunrise and returning long after dark with the single-minded determination of someone conducting an avoidance campaign.Julian, at least, wasn't like Sebastian.He didn't show up outside WHR waiting for my shift to end. He didn't send flowers. He didn't ambush me in parking lots and demand emotional negotiations against my will.I would never admit this out loud, but part of me was disappointed by that.A few days later, Maddie and I were sitting beside a campfire at a
Evelyn's POVA quiet laugh escaped him after that confession, bitter enough that it barely sounded like amusement at all.“That night, you were supposed to meet me,” he continued. “But instead, I watched you kiss your husband in the parking lot, and afterward you even called me just to provoke me.”I closed my eyes harder.Because I remembered all of it.I remembered exactly how reckless and angry I had been that night, how desperately I wanted someone else to hurt simply because I was hurting too, and how satisfying it briefly felt to know Julian sounded jealous on the other end of the phone.“To be honest,” he said after a pause long enough for me to hear him breathe through the door, “I was furious.”There was no defensiveness in his voice anymore, no attempt to soften what he had done or disguise the ugliness of it.“And all I could think at the time was that if you divorced him, maybe I would finally stop feeling this completely unbearable loss of control whenever it came to you.
Evelyn's POVAnd the more I thought about it, the more horrifying another realization became, because underneath all those questions was one truth I suddenly couldn’t escape from anymore:I had never seriously questioned him at all.Not really.Somewhere along the way, I trusted Julian so naturally, so instinctively, that I stopped trying to understand him altogether, and instead I accepted every carefully timed appearance, every act of tenderness, every coincidence that brought him closer to me because being around him felt safe enough that I wanted to believe there was nothing underneath it worth fearing.I wanted to believe in him so badly that I never stopped to ask whether the version of Julian I fell for was real, or simply the version he wanted me to see.I genuinely thought I was getting to know him.Ever since Julian became my neighbor, ever since he brought Lemon home and learned how to care for her with this impossible amount of patience and tenderness, I had accumulated hun
Evelyn's POV“You make yourself breakfast every morning?” I asked as I sat down.I took one bite almost absentmindedly—and immediately looked back at the plate in surprise.It was genuinely good.Julian settled onto the stool beside me with complete ease.“Not every day,” he answered calmly. “Most
Evelyn's POVI practically fled the car after that.The second the seatbelt released, I lowered my head so quickly it probably looked suspicious and climbed out before Julian could say anything else capable of shortening my lifespan.Unfortunately, escaping the car did absolutely nothing to save me
Evelyn's POV“Of course not,” I said quietly. “If I really can’t find another solution, then I’ll bring her to WHR.”I smiled faintly to myself, though there was still worry buried underneath it.“It’s definitely not the ideal place for her. We’re a wildlife rehabilitation center, not a domestic an
Evelyn's POV“Honestly, my parents probably thought the same thing,” I said with a small laugh. “Because after that, I started promising them everything.”The memory came back so vividly now that I could almost hear my younger self speaking again in that overly serious childhood voice.“I told them







