Page 53 of What Goes Around

The surgeon looked at me with a gentleness that almost made me cry.

“The glass severed multiple flexor tendons,” he said. “We need to take her to surgery tonight. Recovery will be long. Months of therapy. Fine motor control may not return fully…”

My stomach dropped.

Months. Maybe years. Maybe never.

Everything I had trained for, every hour, every sacrifice. Gone.

My father just exhaled sharply.

“What a waste.”

My mother pinched the bridge of her nose, the way she always did when disappointed. “Ashley, honestly. Why can’t you be more careful? Why can’t you be more like your sister?”

And Apple, sweet, perfect Apple, dabbed at her tears like she was the real victim.

“It wasn’t her fault,” she whispered. “She didn’t mean to ruin her future.”

At the time I believed she was comforting me. I believed she loved me. As if she were defending me. As if she hadn’t been the one to break the glass.

Back then, I didn’t see it.

But now I remembered the way her mouth twitched, just barely, when the doctor said I might never play at that level again.

She’d probably still been stewing about whatever stupid argument we’d had, wanting a little revenge, a little payback she thought would sting and then fade. She could never have imagined what she’d actually done.

The result was beyond her wildest dreams.

She was finally the only prodigy in the family.

I shoved my scarred hand into my pocket and kept walking.

At school, at my locker, a familiar voice cut through the noise.

“ASH!”

Payton threw her arms around me so hard I staggered. I hugged her back, my chest tightening painfully. The last time I’d seen her, in my first life, she’d been screaming at me, calling me things that still echoed in my bones.

And then she died.

Seeing her alive now… it felt like relief and grief twisted together.

“I missed you,” she said, pulling back with a grin. “Aspen was amazing. But I swear, my family almost killed each other. What’d I miss?”

Too much. And I couldn’t say any of it.

The words burned at the back of my throat:

You believed the worst of me.

You didn’t even let me explain.

How could you?

But I swallowed them.

“That’s great,” I said instead. “Glad you had fun.”