Chapter 19
Jul 4, 2025
Suspended.
That word doesn’t just echo. It haunts. It follows me like a ghost, sticky and shameful, wrapping around my throat every time someone says my name. I hear it in the hallway on the way out of school. I hear it in the silence of the car ride home. I hear it again when my mother finally turns to me and says,
“You’ve humiliated us.”
I don’t speak. What’s left to say? My phone was taken the second we stepped inside. My father hasn’t come home. My mother keeps pacing from the kitchen to the front door like she’s waiting for someone to come fix it. But no one’s coming. There’s no magic answer for what happens when your daughter becomes a scandal. There’s no handbook for when your perfect girl sets herself on fire.
“You weren’t raised like this,” she says that night, voice tight, sharp, each word like a cold slap.
I want to scream. I want to ask her what exactly she raised me for. To be quiet? Obedient? A symbol on someone else’s shelf? Because that’s what I’ve been. A perfect puppet in a glass case, always nodding, never needing. Never wanting.
Maybe she’s right.
Maybe I wasn’t raised to want. To feel. To ache like this and act on it. To crave someone’s voice on my skin or risk everything for a text that made me feel alive. I wasn’t raised to know what power felt like. But I tasted it. And now I’m burning for it.
I don’t eat dinner. I sit on my bed in silence, staring at the wall like it might give me answers. The house is too still. Like everyone’s afraid to breathe in my direction. I’m the virus now. The disappointment. The girl they whisper about. The girl who let him touch her through a screen.
When night falls, I curl under the blanket, but sleep won’t come. My eyes sting. My chest aches. And still, part of me waits. For him.
I don’t want to, but I do.
And just past midnight—I hear it.
A soft knock against the glass pane of my balcony.
I freeze.
Then I rise, slowly, like a part of me already knew he’d come.
I step toward the curtains, pull them aside—and there he is.
Grayson.
Hair wild. Jacket half-zipped. Eyes red-rimmed like he hasn’t slept. He looks like hell. And I hate that he still makes my pulse skip.
I slide the door open just an inch. The air between us is colder than it should be.
“Juliet—” he starts, voice barely above a whisper. “I’m sorry.”
I say nothing.
“I didn’t know,” he says again, stepping closer. “If I had—God, I would’ve done anything. I would’ve stopped it—”
“You should’ve protected me,” I whisper.
He flinches. That pretty mouth of his twists like I just hit him.
“I never meant for—”
“No,” I cut in, voice shaking now. “You never meant for this. You just wanted to see if I could be reckless. If I’d fall for you. If I’d break the rules.”
“I didn’t want to break you.”
“But you did.”
Tears sting the back of my eyes. I blink them away, but it’s no use. They fall anyway, hot and humiliating, and I hate it. I hate that he’s here. That he looks like this. That he’s still beautiful even when I’m shattered.
“You asked for proof,” I choke out. “Proof I wasn’t perfect. Proof I could be yours.”
His lips part. He steps forward again, but I lift my hand—stop him.
“And I gave it to you,” I whisper. “But you didn’t warn me that giving it would mean losing everything else.”
His face crumples.
I can’t do this. I can’t let him look at me like that. Like he regrets it. Like he’s breaking, too. Because if I believe he’s hurting, I’ll let him in. I’ll forgive him.
And I can’t.
I shove him gently backward. Not hard. But enough.
“Go.”
“Juliet—”
“Please. Just go.”
He doesn’t argue. Doesn’t say another word. Just nods, barely, and turns away.
I shut the balcony door before he’s even off the railing.
Lock it. Pull the curtains.
And then I sink to the floor, shaking with everything I didn’t say. Everything I wanted to scream. Everything I still feel.
But I slam the window shut. Because if I see him cry, I’ll forgive him.
And I can’t.
