Eliana Carter POV
There was one last stop I had to make before the airport swallowed me whole.
The Old Oak stood at the edge of the Little estate, a silent sentinel guarding the creek. It was the sacred ground where Jax and I, at ten years old, had sliced our palms.
It was where we swore a blood oath to protect each other.
I needed to kill that memory before I could leave.
I pulled the pocket knife from my jacket, the metal cold against my feverish skin. I found the scar in the ancient bark easily enough. It had weathered with time, but it was still there.
*J + E.*
I drove the blade into the wood.
The oak was ancient, hard and resisting my efforts as if trying to protect the lie we’d carved there. I didn't care. I carved a deep, jagged line through the initials, sawing back and forth until bark flew like shrapnel.
Sap bled out from the fresh wound, weeping like a severed vein.
"Well, isn't this pathetic."
I spun around.
Catalina was standing there. She wasn't being followed. She had been hunting me.
Her gaze flickered over my shoulder, and a slow, toxic smirk spread across her lips. Jax was walking up the hill behind her, though he hadn't seen us yet.
She stepped toward me, lowering her voice.
"Trying to erase history?" she asked, her tone dripping with mock pity. "You can't erase what everyone knows, Eliana. He chose me."
She lunged.
It was a clumsy, flailing motion, but the ground beneath me was treacherous. She shoved me, hard.
I stumbled back, my bad ankle buckling under the sudden weight.
I fell heavily into the mud near the creek bank. The freezing slime seeped instantly through my jeans, chilling me to the bone.
Jax reached the clearing at that exact moment.
He saw me sprawled in the mud. He saw Catalina standing over me, breathless and feigning terror.
"Jax!" she cried out, her voice pitching into a calculated whimper. "She came at me with a knife!"
The damning evidence was still gripped tight in my hand.
I looked up at Jax.
I waited for the truth to matter. I waited for the boy who had bled with me on this very spot to reach down and pull me up.
Jax looked at the gouged, weeping tree. Then he looked at the knife in my hand. Finally, his cold eyes landed on me.
"You are a mess, Eliana," he said, his voice devoid of warmth.
He reached out, but not for me. He took Catalina's hand.
He pulled her to his side, shielding her from the threat he believed I was.
"You are no longer my burden," he said.
The words hung in the damp air, heavier than the mud clinging to my clothes.
They were the sound of a key turning in a lock.
He thought he was discarding me. He didn't realize he was severing the last chain holding me down.
I watched them walk away. I didn't attempt to rise until they had vanished over the crest of the hill.
Slowly, I wiped the mud from my hands. I didn't cry. There were no tears left to shed for people who didn't exist anymore.
I walked to my car.
I drove to O'Hare in a trance. I pulled into the long-term parking lot, turned off the engine, and left the keys sitting on the dashboard.
I walked into the terminal.
I wasn't Eliana Carter, the Chicago Princess, anymore. I was just a ghost with a one-way ticket to New York.
And for the first time in my life, the silence in my head wasn't fear.
It was peace.
