Page 55 of Betray Me
“I’m not trying to excuse what I did to you,” I continue, needing to get it all out before my courage fails. “I made choices. Terrible, selfish choices that hurt you in ways I can never undo. But I need you to understand that those choices were made by a girl who was drowning, who saw you as competition for the only life raft in sight.”
The silence stretches between us, heavy with unspoken pain and grudging recognition. Luna’s hands wrap around her coffee cup, her knuckles white with tension.
“How long?” she asks finally.
“Three years. From eleven to fourteen, when I figured out how to make myself more valuable alive than broken.”
“And you really think that makes us the same?”
The question cuts deep, exposing the fear I’ve been carrying since Dr. Specter first suggested this meeting. “No,” I admit. “I think it makes us survivors of the same system, handled by the same monsters for the same purposes. I think we both learned to adapt in whatever way we could, and I think we both carry guilt for choices we made when we had no real choices at all.”
Luna stares at me for a long moment, her green eyes searching my face for signs of deception or manipulation. Finding none, she exhales slowly.
“I dreamed about you sometimes,” she says quietly. “After everything came out, after the trials. I would dream that you were there, in those rooms, experiencing what I experienced. I thought it was my mind trying to make sense of your cruelty, trying to find some explanation for why someone would choose to hurt another person so systematically.”
“It wasn’t a choice I made consciously,” I say. “But it was still a choice. And I’m sorry, Luna. For all of it. For being weak when you needed someone to be strong. For choosing my safety over your well-being. For letting them use me as a weapon against you.”
She nods slowly, some of the tension leaving her shoulders. “I’m sorry too. For what happened to you. For what they did to you before you became their spy.”
“You don’t need to apologize for that.”
“Maybe not. But I’m saying it anyway.” She takes a sip of her coffee, her expression thoughtful. “My therapist would probably say this is progress—two trauma survivors acknowledging each other’s pain instead of competing over who suffered more.”
A smile tugs at the corner of my mouth despite everything. “Mine would say the same thing. She’s been pushing me to reach out to you for weeks.”
“And here we are.”
“Here we are.”
The conversation continues for another hour, tentative and careful but growing warmer with each exchange. We don’t forgive each other—forgiveness will take time, if it comes atall. But we begin to understand each other in ways that were impossible when we were both trapped in our families’ web of manipulation and control.
When we finally part ways, Luna pauses at the café door. “Belle? Would you… would you want to do this again sometime? Not immediately, but… eventually?”
Hope blooms in my chest, fragile but real. “I’d like that.”
“Thursday afternoons work for me. If you’re interested.”
“I’m interested.”
She nods, something like a smile ghosting across her lips. “Then I’ll see you next Thursday.”
As I watch her walk away, I feel something I haven’t experienced in months: the possibility of healing that doesn’t require isolation. For the first time since my world imploded, I’m not facing my demons alone.
It’s not forgiveness—not yet. But it’s a beginning.
And for now, that’s enough.
Chapter 20: Survivors
Before
The ferry from Shark Bay cuts through the rough water and takes me away from the Gothic towers that have been both my prison and my safe haven. I now make this trip every Thursday to get back to the mainland for my coffee meetings with Luna. It started out as therapy homework and has grown into something more complicated.
The autumn air carries the scent of dying leaves and salt spray as Luna and I walk along the harbor after disembarking, our Thursday coffee meeting having evolved into something more—a tentative friendship built on shared trauma and mutual understanding. It’s been three weeks since our first conversation at Harbor View Café, three weeks of careful circling around the wounds we’ve inflicted on each other.
Today feels different. More honest. Maybe it’s the approaching winter that strips away pretense, or maybe we’re both tired of performing normalcy when everything about our lives has been anything but normal.
“I got a letter from Shark Bay yesterday,” Luna says, her voice carried away by the wind before finding its way back to me. “They want to know if I’m returning for the spring semester.”
