Chapter 44: Vee

That first night, I sat at my father’s side and cried my heart out.

I felt so guilty. I wasn’t responsible for the storm or the tree falling on the roof, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was my fault.

I wasn’t someone who cried easily, but here, back in the city where I had grown up, I felt smaller than ever and, at the same time, more myself than I had in the last few years in Los Angeles.

And then, there was Yaron.

I thought he would avoid me. I thought he would hate me. But he had handled my father’s condition—and my arrival—as if nothing had changed between us. As if I hadn’t broken his heart. As if we hadn’t been strangers for almost seven years. My debt to him kept growing.

I didn’t know how having him around would affect me. I was nervous, scared, and completely lost in a life I both loved and hated with equal intensity.

My PA had made sure my flight and transfer from the airport went unnoticed by the press. She had handled all the paperwork so I could return home without my career or life being affected.