Page 116 of Hard Wired

She went into her room and fell onto the mattress. Ethan shut the door.

A while later, the hinges squeaked open.

“Can I come in?” Faith asked.

“Yesh.” Sylvie’s face was mashed against the pillow. She didn’t have her glasses on, so Faith was a blur across the room.

“Ethan tells me there’s a guy.”

Sylvie groaned. “There was. And there is. Sort of.” Nic, her heart whispered. A flood of tears responded, gathering in her throat.

“That’s not mysterious at all.”

She swallowed down her emotion and tried to explain. “I met someone through work. I really liked him, and he liked me. But if you think you and I have family issues, it’s nothing on him. He had to leave to try to deal with it.” That was the grossest oversimplification Sylvie had ever made, but she didn’t want to get into the drama surrounding the Syndicate. “Just recently, he wrote me again. He wants to talk. But I don’t know if I can.”

She got her phone and showed Faith the message Dominic had written her a week ago. It made her cry every time she read it—because she heard his sorrow in his words, and she felt the same thing in her heart. But she still couldn’t see a path forward. He hadn’t mentioned where he was living or what was really going on in his life.

Faith’s expression showed everything she was thinking as she read Dominic’s text. “That’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard. But I don’t see a response in the thread. Haven’t you written him back?”

“Not yet. I want to. But it’s so complicated.”

“Why?”

“It’s not just him. It’s me.”

Faith sat on the edge of the bed. “How so?”

She struggled to pull her thoughts together. For the last several months, she’d been trying to figure this out.

And then, suddenly, the words just came.

“Some things have been missing from my life for a long time. But I thought I was satisfied. I have a great job, friends. Then I met Dominic, and I realized it was okay to want more. I thought I could actually have it. He’s the reason I wrote back to the card you sent. I wanted to give you a chance, even if I was afraid of getting hurt again.”

“Then I owe him. I’m so glad you did.”

“But there’s still my family back home. My brother and sister have written to me and tried to call over the years, and I never respond. Why haven’t I given them the same chance? What am I even so afraid of?”

Since she’d left home, Sylvie had convinced herself she was the one who was brave. That her family was to blame for being scared of anything new or different.

But it had been her choice to hold onto her anger and resentment all these years. And to lie to herself, pretending she was over it.

She didn’t know about her parents, but her siblings clearly wanted her in their lives. Maybe they were sorry for their mistakes. But she’d never given them the opportunity to prove it.

“You’re afraid they’ll disappoint you again.”

“Am I? That would just confirm what I already thought of them.”

She always said people didn’t really change. After meeting Dominic, she allowed that sometimes people weren’t able to be their true selves. They could make mistakes and have regrets later.

Sylvie hugged her pillow. “But when my family let me walk away when I was eighteen, they were telling me I wasn’t good enough.”

“So you’re afraid if they reject you again, it’s because of you?”

Tears welled from Sylvie’s eyes and slid down her cheeks. Faith scooted closer and circled her arms around Sylvie’s neck.

“What if they were right?”

Back then, Sylvie had called to tell her parents she was dropping out of the University of Texas a few days before she’d done it. They’d listened in stony silence and hung up on her. They hadn’t tried to argue or beg her to stay in Texas, like Faith’s family had done. They’d simply washed their hands. Like she wasn’t even worth the breath it would take to tell her they loved her.

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