Page 55 of North

I ran a hand over my face, nausea churning in my stomach.

I wanted to say something.

Anything.

But what could I say?

Sorry?

Saying sorry wouldn’t fix what I had done. Sorry wouldn’t erase the way she had looked at me last night, like I had stripped her down to nothing, like I had broken something inside of her that would never be whole again.

I forced myself to look at her again.

She still wasn’t looking at me.

Like I didn’t even exist.

Like I wasn’t even worth her hatred anymore.

And somehow, that was worse than anything she could have said.

Aiden turned back to Connor, his voice low, final. “You fucked up,” he told us simply. “And you don’t get to take that back.”

I just stood there. Because for the first time in my life, I had no idea what the hell to do.

Chapter 20

Quinn

The air in the living room was suffocating, thick with tension, grief, and something else—something raw and unresolved. Aiden’s confession echoed in my mind, a relentless loop of words I couldn’t escape.

I stared at the floor, my body numb, my heart too exhausted to keep breaking.

It wasn’t just my father.

The weight of it didn’t rest solely on my shoulders anymore.

For years, I had carried that guilt, let it seep into my bones, let it define me. I let the world judge me for sins I never committed, let them strip me of my dignity, let them mold me into something smaller, something weaker.

The kids at school had bullied me, and my father’s work colleagues would whisper whenever we walked past. Things got so bad that we ended up moving to another town. But now—now I knew the truth, and it didn’t make things better. It just made me angry. Bitter.

Aiden exhaled sharply and turned to Connor and Victor. “Let’s go,” he said, his voice like gravel. “You’ve done enough damage here.”

Connor hesitated. He looked at me then, like he wanted to say something, like he wanted to fix this. But what could he say? There was nothing.

His face was different now—not smug, not cruel. Just… hollow.

I didn’t care.

I couldn’t care.

I looked away first.

Victor placed a hand on Connor’s shoulder, nodding grimly. Neither of them said a word as they followed Aiden out the door, leaving behind the wreckage they had created.

The silence that followed was unbearable.

North didn’t move.

---