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“No one thinks it’s your fault or that you did what they said, Thalia,” Sierra says gently as she steps closer.

Her voice is soft but firm, her hand hovering as if she wants to touch me but doesn’t want to overwhelm me.

“We were only worried because we couldn’t reach you at first. Until Ryan located you,” she admits.

He… located me?

How?

Why?

God, none of that matters right now.

“I’ve never spoken to the press. Ever. And whatever they’re saying about her… about my mother… I didn’t know any of that. I’m hearing it for the first time, just like you.”

“There’s no need to try to convince us, Thalia,” Colt assures me, leaning forward with a seriousness that anchors the room. “We know how the media works. And we know that now they finally have a subject they can use after we’ve ignored them for so long.”

“It’s irrelevant what they say,” Noah adds with a dismissive wave of his hand. “No one here cares.”

“As Sierra said, we were only worried you watched all this alone,” Nick tells me, his tone warm, concerned.

I drag a shaky hand through my hair and shut my eyes for a moment, trying to center myself. My pulse pounds in my ears. My thoughts spin.

I need to calm down.

I need to think.

I need to understand what I just witnessed.

Twenty minutes later, I’m still standing in the living room, my legs numb and shaky beneath me.

I’ve just finished telling them everything—absolutely everything—about my past. Even the moment with my parents at the Gala. From there, Zayn filled in the details I couldn’t bring myself to say out loud.

I showed them the marks on my skin, the ones I’ve always hidden under concealer or foundation. I told them about the beatings, the hunger, the cold, the fear—about everything I had spent years burying so deep inside myself I almost convinced myself it wasn’t real.

About the nights when I was just a child, curled into the far corner of the bed, hiding under the blanket like it could shield me from the outside world, whispering silent prayers into the darkness, my small hands clenched together as if that alone could make a difference—begging for my parents to change, for me to be enough to make them kinder, softer, better.

About how I used to fall asleep imagining a different life, one where my mom would pull me into her arms and hum a lullaby, her fingers brushing gently through my hair as she told me everything was going to be okay whenever I got hurt, whenever I cried, whenever the world felt too big for someone my age.

About how I would picture my dad taking my hand and walking me to the park, pushing me on the swing, waiting at the bottom of the slide with a smile instead of anger, catching me instead of hurting me, his touch warm, safe.

About the version of us that only ever existed in my head—where the three of us cleaned the trailer together, laughing, fixing things side by side, making something out of nothing, happy with the little we had simply because we had each other. Because we cared. Because we loved.

My voice trembles, but I don’t stop. I can’t.

“And when I got older…” I continue, my throat tightening as the words push their way out, “I thought… I really thought that if I gave them money—if I worked enough, if I brought home everything I could—they would change. That they would finally see me. That they would… treat me differently.”

A hollow breath leaves my chest, uneven, breaking at the edges.

“But it only got worse.”

The room is completely silent now. No one moves. No one interrupts.

“The beatings got harder. The trailer got colder. And I still stayed.” My fingers curl slightly at my sides, nails pressing into my palms as if anchoring me to the present. “I stayed because I kept thinking that maybe the next time would be different. That maybe I just hadn’t done enough yet.”

My voice drops, shakes, breaks.

“I didn’t leave until their friends started coming over more often… until the way they looked at me changed.”