Chapter 4

The shower did nothing. I stood under the scalding water for what felt like an hour, scrubbing my skin until it was raw, but I couldn' t get clean.

The phantom scent of his cologne, the memory of his touch, it was all still there, clinging to me like a second skin. It was a stain on my soul, and I was drowning in it.

I was wrapping a towel around myself when my phone rang. It was my mother. A wave of relief washed over me. Finally, someone who would believe me, someone who would hold me and tell me everything would be okay.

I was wrong.

"Chloe, what have you done?" Her voice was sharp, cold, brittle with fury. There was no warmth, no concern.

"Mom?" I whispered, my throat tight.

"Your stepfather just called me. His business partners have been sending him links. Links to a video. A video of you, Chloe. Like some common tramp."

"Mom, it' s not my fault. He..."

"I don' t want to hear your excuses!" she shrieked, her voice shrill and ugly. "Do you have any idea the shame you have brought on this family? On me? All those years I spent teaching you to have some self-respect, to be a lady. And you throw it all away for some stupid boy on a college trip. You' re just like your father. No class. No shame."

Every word was a slap in the face. She wasn' t listening. She didn' t care about the truth. She only cared about appearances, about what her husband' s rich friends thought.

"He disowned me, Mom," I sobbed, the words tearing out of me. "The school, my internship... it' s all gone."

"Good," she said, her voice devoid of any emotion. "You deserve it. Don' t call this house again. I don' t have a daughter. You are no longer a part of this family."

The line went dead.

I sank to the floor, the phone slipping from my numb fingers. The towel fell away. I was just sitting there, cold and naked and completely, utterly alone. My own mother had just thrown me away like trash.

The one person I thought would be my safe harbor had just slammed the door in my face and locked it.

The next blow came a few hours later. I was numbly scrolling through social media, a form of self-torture, when I saw a new post. It was from Ryan.

It was a picture of him and my stepsister, Jessica. They were on a balcony somewhere, the ocean sparkling behind them. His arm was wrapped tightly around her, and she was looking up at him with a triumphant, adoring smile.

The caption read: "Sometimes you have to go through the storm to find your sunshine. So happy to finally be with the one who was there for me all along. I love you, Jessica Miller."

Jessica. My own stepsister. She had always been jealous of me, of my art, of the quiet bond I thought I had with Ryan. She knew how much I liked him.

And she had gone behind my back, siding with him, comforting him while he was systematically destroying my life. Now, they were a couple. It was a public declaration, a final, brutal twist of the knife.

He hadn' t just replaced me; he had replaced me with a member of my own family.

It was the ultimate betrayal. A double-barreled shotgun blast to the heart. First him, then my mother, now him and Jessica together. It was a conspiracy of cruelty, and I was the target.

I scrolled through the comments. They were all fawning, supportive.

"So happy for you both! You deserve it!"

"She' s so much better for you than that other girl."

"The perfect couple!"

People from our high school, people from our neighborhood, even some of my mom' s friends were liking the post. They were all cheering for them, celebrating my demise. They saw Ryan and Jessica as the perfect, happy ending, and I was just the messy, shameful prequel.

I couldn' t breathe. A sound tore from my throat, a raw, animalistic wail of pure agony. It wasn' t a cry; it was a scream of a soul being ripped apart.

I curled into a ball on the cold floor of my empty room, the room I would soon be forced to leave, and I wept.

I wept for the boy I thought I knew, for the mother I had lost, for the future that had been stolen from me, and for the girl who was so stupidly, hopelessly naive enough to believe in any of it.

The pain was a physical entity, a living thing inside me, and it was eating me alive.