LOGINMy eyes move around the room one last time, lingering on the crib, the tiny details I had so carefully put together, and I realize that I’ll have to change it. When she comes back, this room won’t work anymore. I’ll prepare something that fits a loved little girl and I will wait however long it take
After a while, I push myself up from the couch, restless and unsettled. Sitting there isn’t helping. If anything, it’s only making the thoughts louder. Making it harder to ignore them. I need to move, so I push myself up from the couch and start heading toward my room, but I don’t make it far befo
Lilly keeps glancing at me from the corner of her eye, like she’s trying to figure out if I’m okay without actually asking. Eventually, she gives in. “You good?” she asks, her voice softer than usual. I let out a slow breath, staring out the window as the city passes by in a blur. “It’s a lot
I don’t need Aunt Harper to tell me who the baby is. I already know. “He looks just like me,” I say without thinking. Lilly leans in. “Fuck, you two are practically twins.” “Language, Lilly,” Aunt Harper smiles softly. “But you’re right, and if I’d just opened this years back, we would have kno
“Obviously,” I reply, trying and failing not to smile. “I’m the wise one, period.” She rolls her eyes and continues driving. I glance back at her. “Do you have any idea what Aunt Harper wants to talk about?” “Nope,” she says easily. “But I have pretty good idea.” “Mind sharing?” “Can’t do,”
Just as I’m about to leave, my phone buzzes in my hand. I glance down, expecting it to be Aunt Harper, but instead, Lilly’s name flashes across the screen, followed by a text message. [I’m outside.] I frown slightly, surprised because I wasn’t expecting her to come all the way here. I thought we
“She’s a problem,” I mutter under my breath. “She shouldn’t even exist in my equation.”“Then let her breathe for now,” the second woman replies, walking toward me. Her voice is like ice sliding beneath the skin. “You’ll get another chance. But not if you draw attention. We’ve already failed twice.
I watch the two officers as they approach us. I had someone dig into their background, and there seems to be nothing out of the ordinary.After what happened to mom. Iris’s Dad pretending to be a cop in order to get close to her and take her out, I couldn’t take the risk.He’s changed, and Iris visi
The sound of the flatline drills into my skull like a blade. I can’t move. I can’t breathe. All I can do is stare as the doctors keep pressing those damn paddles to her chest, shouting numbers, shouting for life.“Come on, Sierra,” I whisper. “Come on.”This can’t be happening.This can’t be happeni
Everything inside me freezes at his words. They echo in my head like a broken record, over and over again, each repetition more suffocating than the last.This is impossible. Maybe they’re wrong. How could someone want me dead? Who would want me dead?I stare at them, unable to form a single word. M







