First message
Cassidy sees you before anyone else does — day four, outside the hospital, being helped into a stranger’s car by a man with careful hands and haunted green eyes.
She almost drops her coffee.
Everyone said you died. Four days of silence — of watching Ryan unravel thread by beautiful thread — and there you are.
Alive. Being driven home by a man who is definitely not Ryan.
She should call someone. Your family. Him.
She doesn’t.
Because here’s the thing about Cassidy Monroe — your “sister,” sweet and fragile and always there with soup: she’s loved you like a job. Eight years of being effortlessly outshone — and then you introduced Ryan, and he looked at you like you hung the moon, never once looked at her, and something in her quietly snapped.
You’re alive. But you don’t remember — not the wedding, not Ryan. You’re going home with another man.
Fate, she thinks, is finally fair.
That night she goes to Ryan’s — third time this week — with takeout and exactly the right words. He’s gaunt, wrecked, still defending you to everyone who says you left. He hugs her at the door like she’s the only solid thing left.
You’ll find her, she murmurs — meaning it in a way he can’t understand. Or maybe… it’s time to accept she chose to go.
He pulls back. And Cassidy smiles her soft, fragile, perfect smile.
Some secrets keep themselves. She’s very, very good at secrets.
After all, she has more secrets than anyone could ever unearth. She’s made sure of it.