Page 62 of While You Were Trending

I was the youngest. The most immature. The easiest to manipulate into doing something for the cameras. Convincing Ten to sneak out late at night to get me gummy bears from a grocery store. Ruining Caro’s dress before the high school prom she and Ten were invited to attend, since we were homeschooled nomads and didn’t have our own high school for our own prom. Dropping the cake Mom had made for the twins and ruining their birthday. Telling my siblings what they were getting for Christmas. Throwing myself to the ground and screaming in a ValuKart because they were out of my favorite Halloween candy, like I was four instead of fourteen.

Ten was the troublemaker.

Caro was the beautiful perfect angel.

And I was the brat.

The attention was fun for a while, but then suddenly I was a fifteen-year-old with braces and glasses and pimples, a late bloomer who wasn’t a cute brat anymore.

Mom and the producers insisted that making me an easy villain was good for ratings.

But the longer the show went on, the more the people outside of it gave me side-eye and a wide berth and whispered whenever I was recognized in public.

Theworldbelieved every bad thing was my fault.

Being told anything isn’t my fault, by someone who would barely give me the time of day for the years that I dated his best friend—it slices something deep, deep inside of me that I alwaystell myself I’ve worked through until someone rips that wound open again.

Even my having my video go viral and knowing it was probably my mother’s fault didn’t yank the rug out from under me likethis.

My mother—I expect selfish, immature behavior from her.

But Declan?

He might’ve been a dick, he might’ve scowled and left the room any time I walked into it, he might’ve given me short, curt answers to every question I asked, but he was never outright cruel like this.

And him having the audacity to say the one thing I needed to be told by my mother, when he’s the next person in line that I’ve always thought hated me the most?

No, thank you.

I climb to my feet. “Thanks,” I say, even though I don’t mean it.

“Ginny—”

“No.No. You don’t get to show up here, reminding me of the most terrible thing I’ve ever done just by being here, when the world’s laughing at me for it all over again, when my family dysfunction is on full display for you, when I should be enjoying every minute of planning the reopening of the winery that saved my life, and then say you were never nice to me because you liked me. I’ve worked through my shit. The past few days aside, I’m happy. And I’ll be happier when you’re gone.”

“So you get to work through your shit and apologize to Alex, but I don’t get to work through mine and apologize to you?”

My back snaps straight as his point lands.

He’s not asking me to date him.

He’s asking me to forgive him.

I asked Alex the same for something much, much worse.

And I’ve managed to mostly forgive myself for it too.

What I did—it’s in my past.

Except it will always be part of me.

Just like I’ll always have a voice whispering in my head that I should do something crazy like dance through the fields, pouring gasoline on the grapes becauseit would be good for ratings.

Clearly, I wouldnever. Those voices? Those voices are a shitty gift from my teenage years.

And I would never act on those impulses that my mother gave me.

Icanbe a better person than the world believes that I am.