hapter 30
May 8, 2025
Epilogue: One Year Later
Berkeley was everything I dreamed of.
Golden sunsets. Crappy overpriced coffee. Endless lectures that made my brain feel like it had been microwaved and deep-fried. People who didn’t know me as Liam’s ex or Jaxon’s scandal girl — just Zoe Torres, double major, moderately sleep-deprived, still stubborn enough to argue with professors when necessary.
It was good.
It was better than good.
It felt like breathing again.
Jaxon was at NYU, three thousand miles and a million missed flights away, but somehow it didn’t feel that far. We FaceTimed every night — sometimes for hours, sometimes just long enough to wave and complain about midterms before crashing. We sent each other the world’s worst memes at 2 a.m., competed over who could find the sketchiest bagel cart near campus, and made long-distance look almost easy.
It wasn’t, obviously.
But we were stubborn.
And stupid.
And so far, that had been enough.
He flew out to visit me whenever he could — long weekends, holidays, even once for a random Wednesday just because he said he missed me too much to wait for Thanksgiving.
When he showed up, grinning like he still couldn’t believe I was real, I forgot how much distance there was between us.
Until today.
***
It was a lazy Sunday.
The kind where I didn’t bother with real pants and the only thing on the agenda was a caffeine IV and binge-watching terrible cooking shows. Jaxon was sprawled across my tiny twin bed in my even tinier dorm room, flipping through some battered novel for a class I was convinced he was going to ace without reading half of it.
His phone buzzed on the nightstand.
Again.
And again.
He didn’t move, eyes still glued to the page, so when the third buzz vibrated loud enough to rattle my empty coffee cup, I grabbed it.
“Chill, New York,” I muttered, swiping it up to put it on Do Not Disturb.
Except… a text popped up as soon as I touched the screen.
I didn’t mean to read it.
I wasn’t snooping.
I was just… holding it.
But it was right there.
Sender: C.K.
Not a name I recognized. Not a saved contact I remembered.
The message was short.
Just one line:
“Are you going to tell her, or should I?”
My stomach dropped so fast it might’ve fallen through the floor.
The phone buzzed again, lighting up my palm.
Another message, sitting just under the first.
“I mean it, Jax.”
I stared at the screen, a hollow, ugly feeling blooming in my chest.
Because the number — the one listed under C.K. — was achingly, sickeningly familiar.
It was Madison’s.
Madison Kim.
The same Madison who had detonated my life last year like it was a piñata full of secrets.
The same Madison who had looked me in the eye at prom, smiling like she finally had everything she wanted.
The same Madison I hadn’t heard from since.
I looked up at Jaxon.
Still reading. Still stretched out like he had all the time in the world.
Still oblivious.
And me?
I sat there, holding his phone like it might explode in my hand, heart thundering so loudly I was sure he could hear it.
I didn’t know what hurt more, the fact that Madison was texting him at all, or the fact that whatever it was about, he hadn’t told me.
I placed the phone down slowly, carefully, like it was fragile glass.
Jaxon looked up at the movement, smiling in that easy way that used to make my whole day better.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
I smiled back.
“Yeah,” I said. “Fine.”
End of Book One.
