PROLOGUE
Evelyn
“Get out!”
I held my cheek, the sting still sharp where my mother’s hand had struck me. The sound of it echoed louder in my head than the slap itself. She stood there shaking, eyes wild with accusation, screaming that I had slept with her boyfriend.
He stood behind her, pale and confused.
I didn’t bother defending myself.
I’d learned a long time ago that truth didn’t matter in this house.
I backed away slowly, grabbed my coat—keys already in the pocket—and headed for the door of the trailer I had grown up in. The one place I had never felt safe. Never felt wanted.
This would be the last time I ever saw her.
I didn’t look back.
The drive from Jefferson felt endless, four hours of silence broken only by the hum of tires against the road. I had a small apartment in Houston now. A scholarship. A future. Veterinary school.
A life that didn’t include her.
By the time I arrived, exhaustion weighed heavy in my bones. I wanted nothing more than sleep—until I heard the noise coming from inside my apartment.
Laughter.
A woman’s voice.
I already knew.
I unlocked the door and stepped inside, ignoring the two figures tangled together in my living room. And there she was. The same girl who had made my life hell since high school.
My bully.
I didn’t scream. I didn’t cry.
I walked into my bedroom and packed every piece of his shit in silence. Clothes. Shoes. Toothbrush. I dumped it all outside the front door.
Then I opened it.
“Get the fuck out of my house,” I said calmly. “Trey—don’t ever speak to me again.”
Their faces twisted in shock.
I didn’t wait for excuses.
I locked my bedroom door and finally let myself break.
By morning, I understood something important.
I was alone—but I was free.
Six years later, I stood at my graduation.
I had survived veterinary school. I had survived my past. I had survived him.
When the professor called my name and announced my placement in Trondheim, Norway, I felt something shift in my chest.
Distance.
Safety.
A clean break from everything that had tried to destroy me.
I didn’t know then that the past never truly stays buried.
Only waiting.
