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Cam

Thank you for saying that. But I'm not the one who made the sacrifice. She did. She's been living honestly for years. She lost her family for it. She walked away from me because she refused to be a secret, and she did it with more grace than I deserved.

I hesitated, my thumb over the keyboard.

Cam

I'm just the one who finally caught up.

Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.

Karlie

Then she sounds extraordinary.

Cam

She is.

There was a longer pause this time.

Karlie

Good, Cam. This is good. I mean that.

I believed her. We'd hurt each other, the way people do when fear is the loudest voice in the room and neither of them knows how to turn it down. But Karlie had always wanted this for me, under the hurt of how it ended. She'd known, probably better than I had, what the hiding was costing me. She'd tried to tell me. She'd called me a coward on her way out the door, and she'd been right.

Cam

Take care of yourself.

Karlie

You too. Now go get her.

The notifications kept coming past midnight and showed no sign of slowing. I scrolled through them, not calm, but as close to calm as I could get.

One name wasn't there.

I kept scrolling back. Kept looking for it. She'd probably deleted my number. She'd read my text a week ago and hadn't answered. She might not have seen the post yet. It was late. Her phone could be off. She could be asleep.

She could be with someone.

Or she'd seen it, and she had nothing to say.

That last possibility sat in my chest like a stone, and I breathed around it. Around the fear that I'd finally done it, and done it too late. That three weeks of silence and a date with someone else and twelve years of choosing fear had already written the ending before I'd found the courage to show up for it.

I looked at the hair tie on my wrist. I thought about taking it off.

I didn't.

My phone lit up.

An Instagram call. Harper DuBose.

My heart stopped.

I answered before the second ring.