Page 18 of Top Shelf

Me

About as well as your first day as a Steelhawk.

She responds immediately.

Dylan

That badly?

Tell me everything. Wait, no. Do you need a Wren rant, or do you want solutions?

I smile, just a little. The kind of smile that feels like a bandage over a bullet wound.

Me

Everything sucks. Everyone hates me. I nearly cried in a janitor’s closet.

Groaning at my own self-pity, I toss the phone onto the sofa before carrying my half-drunk drink to the sink and pouringit down the drain. My phone pings from the other room, but I ignore it. Instead, I go around the apartment, turning off the lights and triple-checking the windows and deadbolt before retrieving my phone and heading to bed.

I wait until I’ve brushed my teeth and gotten comfy beneath the covers before reading Dylan’s response.

Dylan

Firstly, crying in a janitor’s closet is a rite of passage. Secondly, they can’t hate you. They don’t even know you. Who they think you are and who you are aren’t the same person. Show them what a sarcastic badass Wren Winslow really is.

I can’t help but laugh, my throat thick as I type out a response.

Me

Pretty sure sarcastic badass wasn’t a requirement for getting this internship.

Dylan

Nope, just an added bonus to go alongside your hardcore work ethic and sunny personality.

Before I can compose a response, another message from her pops up.

Dylan

That internship may have your last name on the paperwork, but it’s your fight that’s going to keep you there. You’re not some silver-spoon legacy kid. You’re Wren fucking Winslow. I know you don’t want to be there. And I know you have some sort of history with the Kings that you don’t want to talk about, but remember: you don’t answer to anyone but yourself.

Setting my phone on the nightstand, I turn off the light and roll over, letting the dark settle around me like fog. Dylan’s words echo in the quiet.I don’t answer to anyone but myself.

But whoisWren Winslow?

Who am I beyond a legacy I didn’t choose? Beyond a night I’ve spent three years trying to forget? Beyond the silence I wrapped around myself like armor?

I didn’t ask to come here.

Didn’t ask to reopen a wound I never let heal.

But maybe…it's time.

Not to forgive. Not to forget.

Toremember.

To face it. To facethem.