Page 174 of Silent Shadows

The words snag. Which is irritating because I am famously good at words. In a literal sense.

Marissa waits, not filling the silence. I wish she would.

“They trusted me.”

She nods once. “Okay.”

“And I fucked it up.” I rest my chin on my knees. “It got hard and complicated and I left them exposed and exploited.”

Marissa’s face softens.

“You didn’t exploit them.”

“Oh, no?” I laugh once. “Because I’m pretty sure I was using them to more or less save my career.”

“They were leveraging you to help keep them afloat, too, you know?”

“What do you mean?” I narrow my eyes.

“Maya was very eager to get more exposure for them so they could keep getting funding. This was a mutually beneficial arrangement,” Marissa says matter-of-factly, taking another sip of her coffee.

“I still feel like I was selfish. And it feels selfish now to want to go back. They’re better off without me.”

“Stop! You’re not selfish, and you didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I hurt people.”

“Daisy.”

I shake my head. “No, seriously. That kid’s leg got bent like a banana because people listened to me. But I also hurt Miles. When he overheard our convo, he heard me wavering. Because… because I was scared.” My throat tightens unexpectedly.

“Scared of what, Daisy?” she asks, taking a sip of her drink.

I swallow hard. “What if I do this the way I want to and people hate it?”

Marissa goes quiet. The kind of quiet that means she’s about to say something annoying and correct.

“Okay,” she says carefully. “Hate what?”

I blink.

“What?”

“What’s the actual fear?” She gestures with her coffee.

Hate what?

At first, my brain offers easy answers. The podcast. The weirdness. Bigfoot. The risk. My career. The execs. Sponsors.

All the ways this could implode spectacularly and publicly.

But underneath that, there’s another answer. One that doesn’t want to be found.

I stare down into my latte again.

The foam leaf has begun collapsing in on itself. Relatable.

“What if…” I stop. God. I hate this. I hate vulnerability. I hate feelings. I hate Marissa’s stupid emotionally intelligent face.