Chapter 22: Wrath of an Exile: Chapter 21

October 26

“Not home. Anywhere else. Just not home.”

That’s what Phi whispered in my ear, her voice barely rising above the roar of my engine as we tore through the streets of Ponderosa Springs. I wasn’t sure she meant it—not completely.

Not until I watched her climb the ladder to the top of the water tower, her body tense, each step deliberate, like she was climbing away from the pain here on the ground.

Her fear of anyone seeing her crack—seeing her break—was far worse than any fear of heights.

The only reason I even showed up tonight was because Ezra left his keys at the garage, and unfortunately, the fucking twat is growing on me. Like a fungus, but growing nonetheless.

Phi wasn’t supposed to be there. She hadn’t gone anywhere besides school and home in weeks. I told myself not to get more involved after cornering her in class the other day, but then I saw Oakley.

And I knew it was already too late.

I was too deep in this, whether I liked it or not.

Now, we sit side by side.

Phi’s silence is louder than anything else. The cool, rusted metal of the water tank digs into my back, the grate beneath us biting into our legs, but I don’t move. Neither of us does.

We’ve been like this for at least half an hour—no words, just the cold night air, the wind tugging at us, and the vast sky above.

It’s just us, and I realized on the ride here that if Seraphina Van Doren doesn’t have me, she has no one.

Which is so fucked, considering she’s surrounded by people—family who would tear themselves apart just to help her. But she won’t let them. She keeps them out, locked behind walls no one’s allowed to breach.

I know what that does to someone. I know what keeping all this shit inside does. It gnaws at you, chews through everything that makes you human, until there’s nothing left. I watched my father disappear into the needle, into his own fucking oblivion, and I couldn’t do shit to stop it.

I couldn’t save him.

But maybe—maybe—I can save her.

Because all this pain she’s been carrying, trapped inside her body with nowhere to go?

It’s going to fucking kill her if she doesn’t let it out.

“I’d just dyed my hair.”

Phi’s voice finally breaks the silence, so soft I almost miss it.

The words are fragile, barely cutting through the wind, like they’re not meant for anyone to hear.

She doesn’t look at me—won’t look at me. Her eyes stay fixed on the horizon, on the endless stretch of trees that disappear into the darkness. Phi’s talking to the night itself, and I’m just part of the background.

“When I met Oakley, I’d just dyed my hair for the first time.”

“Geeks, you don’t have to—” I start, trying to give her an out. I don’t want her to feel like she has to spill this. I didn’t make her leave with me to talk. I just didn’t want her to be alone.

“No.” The word breaks from her lips, head shaking as she cuts me off. “I want to. I need to.”

I’ve never known Phi to be anything but a force of nature—wild, untamed, always pushing against the world. I’ve seen her shattered, crumbling under the weight of her own pain.

I’ve seen her in the throes of anger, every word sharp enough to cut, every movement filled with rage. But I’ve never seen her like this.

Never seen her soft, vulnerable, the edges of her hardened armor slipping away.

“I was fourteen,” she says, the words like stones dropping into the silence. “Desperate to feel some kind of connection to Sage. Andy has her natural auburn hair under all the pink, and I wanted that. Some physical proof that I belonged, that I was hers. Her daughter.”

Phi wipes at her face, her sleeve dragging across her cheeks, but it’s no use. Once the tears start, they don’t stop. They just keep spilling, silently, as if all the pain she’s been hiding is pouring out of her in waves.

It’s like watching a storm quiet for the first time, the wild winds calming, revealing something fragile beneath all that chaos. There’s a tenderness in her now, a quiet ache that lingers in the way she moves.

It’s startling, like catching a glimpse of something sacred.

Rare.

“So I tried it,” she sighs, the sound exhausted, like it’s taking everything in her just to keep talking. “I thought it would make me feel like I fit in. Like maybe I could have that piece of her too. But I had no idea what I was doing. Left it in too long, and this…this is the color I was left with.”

The wind tugs at her hair, lifting the strands and pulling them across her face like ghostly fingers. Her hair, knotted and tangled from the ride, catches the light of the moon.

All I can think about is how something as simple as her hair became the start of her nightmare.

“Mom told me it was beautiful. Over and over again. That it suited me. All I could think was how it would be just one more thing for them to use against me. The shy, nerdy, adopted girl with the bad hair. One more thing to make me stand out in all the wrong ways.”

Phi laughs, but it’s hollow, brittle, like it’s coming from somewhere deep inside her, a place that’s already broken.

“I ran into him that morning. Just before school. He picked up a lock of my hair and said, ‘Cherry. My favorite flavor.’”

Once she starts, she doesn’t stop.

Her words are like shards of glass, sharp and unforgiving, slicing through the heavy quiet of the night. Each one lands like a fresh wound, cutting deeper with every breath she takes. She tells me how Oakley slipped into her life—slow, deliberate—like poison finding its way into her bloodstream. He didn’t arrive with the force of a storm, didn’t tear through her world all at once. No, he was patient, subtle, creeping in at the edges, until one day he was everywhere.

He came after school with easy smiles and practiced compliments, offering just enough attention to make her feel seen. To make her believe she mattered to him, like she wasn’t just the shy, awkward girl who faded into the background. He made her feel like someone worth noticing.

And she was fourteen. Too young, too naive, and too desperate to be seen.

She didn’t see it happening—how he was slowly, methodically setting the stage, pulling her deeper into his web. How her hunger for validation was something he could twist, could use. He took the ache she carried in her chest—the need to be someone, to belong—and turned it into something he could exploit.

And the worst part?

I didn’t see it either.

I had no fucking clue. No idea what was happening right in front of me. I didn’t see the signs, didn’t know how deep she was sinking until it was too late. Five months, she says. Five months of him weaving his way into her world, stringing her along like she was nothing more than a pawn in whatever sick, twisted game he was playing.

And I hate myself for it. I hate that I didn’t see him approaching her or notice him texting her. Maybe if I had, I could’ve stopped it. Maybe I could’ve done something—anything—before Halloween night four years ago.

But by then, he had her exactly where he wanted her. Vulnerable. Falling for him. Her heart wide open, full of hope, and ready to be crushed. And that’s exactly what he did. He took all of that—the fragile, innocent trust she gave him—and destroyed it.

He shattered her in ways no one could fix. Made sure that anyone who came after him would have to fight tooth and nail just to get a glimpse of the heart she’s laying bare in front of me now.

She whispers the words, her voice barely more than a breath carried on the wind, but I hear them. I hear every single one, and with each syllable, she tears me apart.

“I lied to my parents for the first time that night. I snuck out. I went to that party in West Trinity Falls. I got drunk. I went into his room. I kissed him first.”

Her voice trembles, and I can hear the shame in it, the self-hatred tangled up in every word.

Phi’s a girl who deserved so much more than what she got. A girl who trusted the wrong person and paid the price. And it guts me. It fucking destroys me, knowing I didn’t see it—knowing I wasn’t there to stop it.

I clench my fists, the cold metal of the water tower biting into my palms, but the pain doesn’t register. All I feel is the rage—this burning need to tear this whole fucking tower apart.

I want to destroy him. I want to find Oakley and tear him apart, limb by limb, for what he’s done. For what he’s still doing. For the way he’s made her feel like this—small, broken, like she’s to blame.

But I can’t. I can’t because if anyone deserves to kill Oakley Wixx, it’s Phi, and I won’t take that from her.

“I did those things, Jude. I made those choices.”

Before I even realize what I’m doing, my hand is on her, firm but gentle. My fingers grip her jaw, pulling her toward me because I need her to see me.

“Look at me.”

Her breath stutters, shaky and uneven, and when she finally lifts her gaze to mine, her eyes are glassy, filled with guilt and pain that twists deep inside me.

It’s the kind of hurt that clings to you, digs its claws in, refusing to let go. And I can feel her breath on my lips—warm, unsteady—reminding me just how close she is.

All I want to do is take it all away. Every bit of it.

I don’t want her to look at herself like this—like she’s broken, like she’s fragile, like she’s something less than the force she is.

Because that’s not who she is. That’s not who she’s ever been.

Not to me.

“What happened was not your fault.” My voice is rough, scraping like gravel against the night air. “It was never your fault. Oakley is a sick piece of shit, and nothing—nothing—you did made you deserve that.”

Phi’s eyes drift, distant, like she’s somewhere else, somewhere she can’t escape from. I recognize the look—it’s like she’s trapped in her own memories, suffocating under the weight of everything she’s kept buried. And when her voice finally cracks through the silence, it’s barely above a whisper.

“Then why do I feel like it was? Why does it feel like every choice I made led me here? To this?”

I don’t answer right away. I can’t. The pain in her voice, the way she looks at me like she’s drowning in her own guilt—it guts me, rips me open from the inside out.

I’m reminded, all too vividly, of the nights I spent watching my dad, lying in piles of his own vomit, begging anyone, begging me, to make it stop. To take his pain away. And just like then, all I can do now is sit here, feeling fucking helpless.

Because that’s what it feels like when someone is falling apart in front of you. You want to fix it, to save them, but sometimes, all you can do is be there.

So that’s what I do.

My hand moves from her jaw, brushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear. The touch is light, steady—something solid for her to hold on to. She needs that right now. Something that won’t waver, won’t break under the weight of everything she’s carrying.

“You were a kid. You were a kid, Seraphina,” I finally say, my voice low, trying to contain the fury that’s simmering beneath the surface. The anger I feel, not at her, but at him. “He took advantage of you, Geeks. He used you. And that’s on him—not you.”

I can see the battle raging behind her eyes—the way she’s fighting the truth, trying to push it away, burying it under the mountain of guilt she’s carried for years. I know that somewhere deep inside her, she knows it wasn’t her fault. She knows it. But knowing the truth in your head doesn’t stop the damage it does to your heart.

She’s been carrying this for so long, letting it poison everything she touches, letting it warp the way she sees herself. And it’s killing me to watch her struggle, to see her drowning in a sea of shame she doesn’t deserve to feel.

“The fire at St. Gabriel’s.” Phi looks away, her voice barely more than a rasp, raw and broken. “I didn’t know you’d be there. I knew Oakley liked to break in and hang out there, but I didn’t…you weren’t supposed to be there.”

“Seraphina, I⁠—”

“Oakley told me you knew about us, that he’d talk to you about me. I thought you were in on it all along. I almost killed you that night. I’d wanted to. I wrecked your life, Jude.” She chokes out a little sob, trying to catch her breath before rambling on. “That’s on me. I did that. And I know sorry will never be enough to fix it.”

I don’t blink. Don’t look away.

I just keep staring at her, letting her feel the full weight of my gaze.

That fire had royally fucked my life.

Phi’s lie gave Ponderosa Springs the proof they needed to believe I was no better than my father. It set off a chain reaction, erasing Jude and leaving only the Sinclair name in its wake, branding me with a legacy of destruction before I ever had the chance to be anything else.

I should be angry, but I’m not.

How could I be when I’ve seen what this has done to her? How could I hate her when I know—when I feel—that her actions were born out of her own brokenness, her own suffering?

Because I know what it’s like to feel trapped inside your own pain. I know what it’s like to make choices that you regret because you’re trying to survive the only way you know how.

I’ve been there. In that darkness, lashing out, making mistakes, just trying to feel something other than the ache that’s eating away at you from the inside out. I’ve been the person who let pain turn me into someone I didn’t recognize.

“Then don’t be sorry.”

The words hit her like a shock, and I can see it in her eyes—the way they widen just slightly, like she didn’t expect that. Like she’s been bracing herself, waiting for me to lash out.

Waiting for the anger, the blame, the words she’s convinced herself she deserves. She’s been holding her breath, waiting for me to confirm everything she believes about herself—that it’s her fault, that I’m angry, that I hate her for what happened.

“Don’t be sorry, Geeks. I don’t hold your hurt against you. Pain—” I pause, my voice softening just slightly, gentling like I’m trying to calm a wild animal. “Pain can turn us into people we were never meant to be.”

She shakes her head, her lips trembling as the words spill out. “You should hate me.”

“Maybe,” I grunt, “but I don’t.”

Our pain feels a lot like distant twin flames.

Our scars might be different, etched by different hands, but they burn the same. We’re forged in the same fire, tempered by the same agony that no one else could ever truly understand.

I can’t hate her when she’s the only one who carries that same weight—the same unbearable burden of living in a world that never gave us a chance to be anything but broken.

The weight of her words settles between us, heavy and raw, but it’s the kind of heaviness that feels shared now. Like all the shame and guilt she’s carried for years has been halved, passed over to me in a sore exchange I didn’t ask for but am willing to hold.

Because maybe that’s what she needs right now—someone to share the weight. Even for just a second.

The cold bites into my skin, the metal of the water tower seeping through my clothes, but I don’t move. The wind whips around us, tugging at our hair, cutting through the silence like a living thing.

We just sit there, side by side, as the sky slowly begins to lighten, the inky black fading into the softest shade of gray. It’s still dark, but there’s a hint of something on the horizon—a promise of dawn, of light breaking through the darkness. The kind of light that doesn’t quite reach us yet but is close enough to feel.

Phi lets out a long, quiet sigh, her back pressing deeper into the cold steel of the tank before she finally lets herself relax against me. Her head drops to my shoulder, the weight of her body sinking into mine.

“I don’t want to leave yet. I just want a few more seconds of this. Of everything being broken and not having to pretend it’s not.”

Her words hit me in a place I didn’t know I could still feel, and for a moment, I don’t say anything. I just look down at her, her red hair falling in loose, tangled waves across my chest.

She’s wearing one of those oversized flannel shirts she always steals from Reign, the sleeves too long, the hem frayed from years of use. It hangs loosely on her, making her seem even smaller than she is.

There’s something about the way she’s curled into me that feels fragile. Like if I move, even an inch, the world will shatter around us again.

I let out a slow breath, resting my chin lightly against the top of her head, the smell of vanilla filling the space between us.

“We can stay here as long as you want, Geeks.”

And we do. We stay.

The horizon begins to lighten, ever so slowly, the night bleeding into dawn with hues of pale lavender and soft pink. The wind rustles through the trees, carrying the salty scent of the ocean, and the stars, one by one, begin to fade from the sky. But we don’t move. We don’t speak. We just exist here, in this quiet moment that feels suspended between time and space, like if we sit still enough, we can pretend the world isn’t waiting for us down below.

Sometimes we sit in complete silence, not needing to fill it with anything. Words are unnecessary up here, where it feels like nothing can touch us. At one point, Phi grabbed my pack of cigarettes and threatened to toss them over the edge of the tower, her fingers brushing dangerously close to the edge, before deciding instead to take one for herself.

She didn’t smoke it—she drew a dick on it, like the little shit she is.

And then, like clockwork, she breaks the silence with one of her random questions. That’s how she’s been, filling the gaps in conversation with some strange, obscure piece of knowledge that takes me a minute or two to fully understand.

“You ever think about parallel universes?”

I scoff, shaking my head with a small laugh. “No, Miss Eternal Damnation, but I’m sure you have, and you’re about to tell me all about it.”

Phi doesn’t lift her head, doesn’t even shift in my arms, but I feel her smile against my shoulder, soft and fleeting, like she’s still with me, even if her mind’s somewhere far away.

“It’s this idea that every choice we make creates another universe,” she murmurs, her voice low and steady, like she’s thought about this a thousand times before. “When I’m stoned, I like to think there’s a version of me out there where none of this happened. Where I’m different. Better, maybe.”

I glance down at her, her hair spilling over my chest, catching the faintest hint of the dawn’s light. Her face is half-hidden in the shadows, but I can see the weariness etched into the lines of her expression, the weight of everything she’s been carrying for so long.

It breaks something in me—something I didn’t even know could still be broken.

“I gave up hoping on a better existence a long time ago, Geeks.”

My voice sounds rougher than I intended, a little too raw, but it’s the truth. I’ve never believed in second chances, not for people like me, at least. The fates spin your thread, and then it’s tangled beyond repair. There’s no undoing it.

I look back out at the horizon, watching as the light creeps over the tops of the trees, casting long, skeletal shadows across the ground. The cold nips at my skin, but I barely feel it. Not with her pressed up against me like this, like we’re the only two people left in this godforsaken town.

“What if there’s another version of us out there? You think we hate each other in all of them?”

I can’t help but laugh, “With the way Rook Van Doren holds a grudge, I’d say our family hatred spans across every universe.”

“True,” Phi snorts, her breath warm against my neck. “We could be total strangers in one of them. I could be your boss, or you could be my annoying-ass neighbor. So many different possibilities, and yet this is the one we’re stuck in.”

The words hang in the air, heavier than they should be. Maybe because they’re true. Out of all the versions of us that could exist, this is the one we’re trapped in. The one where we’re both broken, both scarred, both too far gone to ever really fix.

“That’s life,” I mutter, “The thread’s spun, it’s tangled, it’s cut. There’s no rewinding it. No fixing it.”

“So let’s make our own.”

I arch a brow, not quite sure where she’s going with this. “I think you’ve been watching too much Doctor Who⁠—”

“I’m serious, asshole.” Phi shifts beside me, her head lifting slightly, just enough for her to glance up at me through a curtain of wild, tangled red hair.

For a moment, the world seems to pause, caught between the fading night and the creeping dawn, as her eyes meet mine.

Green sea glass.

The same exact color as the ones I used to find on the beach with my grandmother when she was still alive. Lost and discarded by the sea, once sharp but softened by years of tumbling in the waves until they were nothing but smooth, weathered fragments.

Broken, but somehow more beautiful for it.

Seraphina would fucking have eyes that remind me of the only home I’ve ever known.

“Right here, right now, we’re no one. There’s no history. No last names. You’re just Jude. I’m just Phi. We can create something that’s ours.”

Phi says it so easily, like it’s the simplest thing in the world—to just forget everything, to strip away all the pain, all the scars, and just be…us.

But it’s not that simple.

It can’t be, not for us.

“Just Geeks and the Loner, huh?” I grunt, biting the inside of my cheek to keep from grinning at her tired eyes.

“Yeah.” Phi gives a little nod. “Our universe, Loner.”

“Our universe, Geeks.”

The words feel like razor blades coming out of my throat.

Fucking Phi is one thing. I could handle that.

Letting her trauma vomit on me to help her carry the weight of it? Easy.

I could compartmentalize, keep my distance, pretend this is nothing but crossed suffering and sexual tension.

But this? Conversations about the universe until dawn? Getting involved with her emotionally? Letting myself feel anything more than resentment and sexual attraction?

It’s inviting destruction into my life.

We don’t get a neat little happily ever after. Hell, we’ll barely get a shot at friendship.

We are a tragedy.

Like Heathcliff and Catherine, forever locked in a brutal dance of passion and destruction, tearing each other apart because they don’t know how to love without bleeding.

We’re the kind of story people warn you about, the kind they study in classrooms with furrowed brows and ask, How did it get this bad?

We’re not made for soft endings. We’re made for catastrophe, for the kind of connection that leaves scars, the kind that haunts you long after the final page is turned.

I know that.

And yet, I stay.

Because my stupid, dumbass fucking heart still has a tiny piece of hope. A flicker of light that maybe this is our universe.

Maybe, in this tiny, fleeting moment at the top of a water tower, we get to rewrite everything. We get to create something that’s ours, something that doesn’t belong to anyone else.

And that’s all I’ve ever wanted. Something to belong to me. To just Jude.

I stay because, for the first time, I can see her—the real her. The fragile, broken parts she’s hidden for so long, laid bare in the pale light of dawn. But I know this moment, this rare glimpse of her heart, is fleeting. It’s like watching a solar eclipse—brief, breathtaking, and so damn fragile that if I blink, it’ll be gone.

Tomorrow, the walls will go back up. She’ll retreat into her shadows, into the safety of the armor she’s spent years building, and I’ll be left standing here, wondering if I’ll ever see her like this again.

And like a solar eclipse, it’ll leave me with nothing but the memory of something beautiful and untouchable.

Phi sighs, her head falling back against my shoulder as the first rays of sunlight begin to stretch over the horizon.

“In this universe, none of this makes us friends, Jude.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

Whatever this is, whatever we are, it’s not friendship. It’s something messier, darker, and something that’ll probably tear us both apart before it’s over.

But for now, I’ll take this moment—the quiet, the pain, and our fleeting universe giving me the chance to see the brief eclipse of her vicious heart.