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Harry’s arm tightened around me like he knew what was coming.

“We hit a patch of black ice.” My voice had gone flat. I knew from experience that flat was the only way I could get through this part. If I let myself feel it while I said the words, I’d never finish. “The car spun out and went off the road. I don’t remember the impact but I remember the sound—this horrible crunching, screeching sound—and then nothing. When I woke up I was in the hospital.”

I took a breath. And then another. And then I said the thing I’d never said out loud to anyone who didn’t already know.

“And that’s when I found out that Bryce had died instantly.”

Tears were now streaming silently down my face. I couldn’t have stopped them even if I’d tried. The memories were rushing back now, painful and fierce like they were trying to flay me open to pay for my selfishness with blood.

“For a long time after—” My throat closed. I had to take another breath before I could force the words through it. “For a long time, I wished I’d died with him.”

Harry’s other arm came up, and he wrapped me up in a tight hug as I buried my face in his chest, soaking in his warmth. He hadn’t said anything and I was so grateful. He wasn’t telling me it was okay or he was sorry or any of the other empty platitudes so many people said at this kind of story. He just held me, and it was the exact thing I needed in this moment. It was what gave me strength to tell him the rest.

“I was in the hospital for months. The damage to my legs was…extensive. You’d never know it to look at me—whatever small scars are left have faded to almost nothing—but internally it was bad. Even after multiple surgeries and physical therapy.” I stared down at my lap. “They told me I’d never be able to figure skate competitively again. And I remember the doctor saying it like it was supposed to be this devastating blow, but all I could think was good. I didn’t care. I didn’t care about skating or the Olympics or any of it. Bryce was dead and it was my fault because I’d been too stubborn and selfish about a stupid competition. So never being able to skate competitively again felt like the least that I deserved.”

I clamped my jaw shut and breathed through my nose until I trusted myself to keep going.

“My parents blamed me.” I said it simply, like a fact, because to me it was. Hell, I’m sure everything made sense to Harry now about their reactions to me. “They never said the exact words—not to my face—but they didn’t have to. I could see it every time they looked at me. Or didn’t look at me. My brothers, too, although it was less obvious with them. Eric was only fourteen. Jordan tried to hold everything together because that’s what Jordan does. But I could feel it. The whole house felt like a…like a tomb. And I was the ghost haunting it.

“So when the hospital was getting ready to release me after another surgery, I called my aunt in San Diego. Got my rehab referrals transferred. Packed the stuff that mattered into two suitcases and left.”

The cold air stung my eyes, but I didn’t blink.

“I haven’t been home to Seattle since.”

FOURTEEN

She’d handed me every jagged piece of herself, and all I wanted to do was hold them until she was ready to put them back together.

The silence after Sam finished was heavy with the weight of everything she’d just trusted me with. I’d admired her and been attracted to her from the moment I met her, but finally knowing the full truth of her only made me more devoted to her. She’d carried this blame and guilt like it was her burden to bear, and no one had ever taken the weight of it off her shoulders. It seemed to me like her family had never even tried.

Her face was still buried in my chest, and the dampness of her tears soaked through my shirt as her breath hitched every few seconds like her body was still catching up to what she’d said out loud. My arms stayed locked around her because letting go wasn’t an option.

Not now.

Maybe not ever.

I already knew most of it; Mira had filled in the broad strokes back at the coffee shop. But hearing it from Sam—hearing her voice crack on Bryce’s name and the flat, detached way she’d described the accident like she had to remove herself from the story just to survive telling it—was something else entirely.

It was trust in its purest form. And she’d given it to me.

I held her tighter, wishing I could slay the demons she’d carried silently for so long. But now that I knew, there was no way in hell she’d be carrying them alone anymore.

When her breathing finally steadied, she pulled back just enough to wipe her eyes with the sleeve of her jacket. Her nose was red from the cold and the crying, her eyes swollen, and she looked so far from the untouchable Sam Lowe that everyone at CFU knew—and somehow, impossibly, even more beautiful.

“Does Abby know?” The question came out before I could think about whether it was the right one to ask. But it had been circling my mind since the coffee shop, since I’d started connecting the dots between the Sam I knew in Montana and the girl who’d survived this horrible tragedy.

Sam shook her head. “Montana was my fresh start. A clean slate.” She stared at the empty park in front of us, her voice steadier now but still weaker than what was normal for her. “I didn’t have to be the broken girl who destroyed her family. I could be someone new. Someone confident and happy who only brought positivity and support to the people around her.”

And just like that, every single thing I thought I knew about Sam Lowe rearranged itself.

Everything suddenly made sense. All the questions I’d wondered about, her relentless positivity, the way she was always the first person to show up and the last to leave—whether it was helping Harper move furniture or staying up with Drew when Rory wouldn’t sleep.

Even her relationship with Abby made more sense. We’d all learned about how Abby’s mom died freshman year, and then we’d all been there for her when her grams died last year, but Sam had been the one holding her together the whole time. She’d been the one keeping Abby above water when she’d felt like drowning. But she’d never once taken the credit. It was Abby who’d made it clear how important Sam was, whereas Sam simply made it clear she wouldn’t let anyone hurt Abby after the hurt she’d already experienced.

Meanwhile, Sam had been hiding her own hurt the whole time.

She’d moved her entire life around to be what Abby needed—first as a roommate, then as a housemate when she moved into the hockey house so Foster could take Sam’s spot on their lease and live with Abby and her brother, Mason. Sam had done it without complaint or hesitation, like it was the most natural thing in the world.