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But then how could I live with losing Daniel forever?

How could I wake up every day for the next fifty years and function like this, knowing that I didn’t have to. That feeling this was a choice, a decision I made. That I’d picked this for me and him.

And that was the most crucial part of all.

How Daniel must feel, having this breakup thrust on him against his will. Having no say in any of it. Wasn’t that worse than all the rest of it? Hurting someone I loved whose only crime had been unconditionally loving me back?

My parents had never loved me unconditionally. Never. So then why was I loving them that way? Why did they deserve that? Why did I think I had to sell my soul instead of them maybe learning to be open-minded or tolerant or just quiet about the choices their children were making?

But I knew why I thought I had to give them that…

I could hear my therapist in my head, breaking it down for me the way she probably would have been doing for weeks if I’d still been going to see her.

My dad was my abuser.

He was no different than Neil.

And my mom was his enabler.

I’d spent my whole life chasing my father’s affection and approval, accepting his hurtful words, letting him get away with it. And I’d always thought Mom was a victim too, that we were in it together—and maybe in a way we were. But for the first time, maybe ever, I saw it differently.

Because she never protected us.

Mom had normalized this abuse. Indulged it. She’d made me a participant, reinforced this behavior by giving my father what he wanted when he acted this way. The most influential woman in my life had modeled this for me from the day I was born and told me to take it. She’d taught me this, primed me for my relationship with Neil. Made me believe that this was what love looked like.

Bri was right. I’d been taught to placate assholes.

I’d been taught by Mom.

My heart started to pound.

It was too much to unpack now, all the layers of dysfunction and the consequences of their existence. I couldn’t think about who I’d be if I’d never been born to this family or if I’d been shown love without conditions or a mother with the strength to enforce the boundaries she never could. I couldn’t go back. I didn’t even want to.

I just wanted out.

I didn’t want to coddle my toxic parents. I didn’t want to die a martyr on the pyre of Royaume Northwestern, no matter how honorable that might be. I didn’t want my eighty-hour-a-week job because even though it should be, it wasn’t filling my well. I didn’t want this house or this life.

All I wanted was Daniel.

Being without Daniel was worse than anything I’d ever experienced. And I couldn’t have known this until I lived it. I couldn’t in my wildest dreams have imagined how utterly unlivable this life would be without him in it, until it actually happened.

But Daniel could.

He knew, weeks ago, months ago, what this would feel like. It was why he’d been willing to leave Wakan for me. He’d known. And I hadn’t.

I had to drown first.

And I was finally, finally ready to save myself.

Something flipped in my brain.

An enormous, stuck gear slowly turned inside of me, and an unmovable building block of my very makeup shifted. Daniel rose to the top, and everything else repositioned with a heavy metallic clank that echoed through my entire existence. For the first time in my life, my parents and Royaume Northwestern took second seat to something else, and the moment they did, a flood of new thinking poured out. Ideas I never would have considered began bubbling up, sloshing around, spilling into my mind. A mental clog disintegrated, and alternate pathways started to form.

And then I knew what to do. I knew it so clearly, I started to laugh.

I got up and darted across the room for my phone.

Bri twisted to watch me. “What are you doing?”