The Family Group Chat Without Me, The Truth They Hid Chapter 09

The Family Group Chat Without Me, The Truth They Hid Chapter 09

By the time winter break approached, I had started makitig a name for myself through a handful of small performances.

People on the Sablewick student forum were talking about “the girl with the angel–kissed voice.”

Word traveled faster than I expected.

Before long, Stellan and Tamsin tracked me down in Morrowfield through my performance announcements.

Light snow was falling when I walked out of the rehearsal hall and found Tamsin waiting outside.

The moment she saw me, she shot to her feet and grabbed my wrist. Her eyes were red.

“Cyra… I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

“Things are a mess back home. Miri… she fell in with the wrong crowd, started using drugs, and got

arrested.”

“Your mom got so sick over it she could barely get out of bed. She threw all of Miri’s things out and said she wasn’t part of the Bellmont family anymore.”

“For the past six months, she’s looked through your pictures every day. She knows you blocked her, so she keeps asking me if I’ve heard anything from you.”

Her voice broke.

“Cyra… will you come back and see her?”

I listened quietly, then slowly pulled my hand free.

“Do you really think I would?”

Tamsin froze.

The tears on her face didn’t stop, but she had nothing to say.

She knew that once I made up my mind, I rarely changed it.

After a long silence, she crouched down and covered her face, sobbing.

“Cyra, I’m sorry. I know nothing I say matters anymore… but I regret it so much.”

“When I was being bullied, you were always the one who stepped in front of me. You took so much for me, and then I turned around and helped them do the same thing to you.”

“I think I just wanted to feel like I was protecting someone for once. Miri always acted so fragile, like she needed me, and I let myself believe that meant I had to take her side.”

“I never meant to hurt you.”

She looked up at me through her tears.

“I’m not asking you to forgivene, I just hope you have a good life, Cyra.”

“I could spend the rest of mine trying, and I still wouldn’t be able to make up for what I did.”

When she finished, she turned and stumbled away.

Stellan had been standing under a streetlight a short distance away the entire time.

He never came over.

He didn’t say a word.

From that day on, he simply followed me around like a shadow.

I couldn’t be bothered to look at him.

At the final performance that week, I finished my last song and walked offstage.

After the audience cleared out, Stellan blocked the backstage exit.

His eyes were red, and his voice was so hoarse I could barely hear him.

“Cyra… can I…”

I stopped.

“No.”

“Stellan, there’s no going back for us.”

He said nothing.

His hand slowly clenched at his side, then loosened again.

Later, I heard that after Stellan returned to Wrenford, he stopped attending classes and was eventually

expelled.

The news came through an email from an address I didn’t recognize.

The message was casual, almost gossipy.

Familiar enough that I didn’t need to wonder who had sent it.

I opened it, skimmed the message, deleted it, and blocked the account.

Then I closed my laptop, picked up my sheet music, and walked into the practice room.

I wasn’t curious about what happened to them.

I didn’t feel sorry for them, either.

They had nothing to do with me anymore.

I had a new life now,