Shatters.
“Richard,” she cries out, voice crackling like a rusted hinge. “It’s not what they think. It’s not—” She swings her gaze toward me, wild and blistering. “She twisted everything. She—she ruined everything. You know that. You told me?—”
“Jessica.” Richard says her name like the edge of a blade. Not angry. Not yet. But bewildered. “What did you do?”
“I didn’t hurt anyone!” she spits, lunging forward, the officers restraining her instantly. “I went to talk to her. I just wanted to talk. She provoked— She?—”
“Jessica.” His voice deepens—the voice he used when he confronted Stella about broken rules as a child. Controlled. Quiet. Final. “You had a gun.”
“I was trying to fix things!” Her gaze shoots to me, then to Noah, who stands just inside the doorframe, arms folded, jaw tight, every line of his body protective. “You said you still loved her. If she wasn’t standing in the way?—”
Richard’s face drains of color.
I watch the truth land.
Split him down the middle.
Shock.
Confusion.
Disbelief.
It all plays out in his expression in real time.
“I never—Jessica, I never said—” His voice breaks, raw emotion shredding the words. “I never meant for you to—God. What were you thinking?”
“I was doing what you wanted!” she screams. “You said she was selfish. You said she still controlled everything. You said she didn’t deserve?—”
“Enough,” he says sharply.
It guts her.
It guts him too.
For a split second, she looks like she might lunge again—not at me this time, but at him. The officers tighten their hold.
Jessica’s voice collapses inward.
Small. Childlike. A different kind of terrifying.
“You chose her,” she whispers, pleading and broken. “You always choose her.”
Her knees fold beneath her. The cops support her weight as she crumples.
Richard presses a hand to his forehead, eyes closing.
“I’ll meet her at the station,” he mutters to the cops, but not harshly—just hollow. Wrecked.
The officers guide Jessica toward the street. She continues to stare at me, lips trembling, eyes full of a hatred so sharp it feels like talons dragging across my skin.
And just as she’s being lowered into the back of the squad car, she says it—soft enough that I can’t hear, but I read her lips: “This isn’t over.”
Something prickles up my spine.
Not fear?—
Recognition.