Sean's words left me in deep thought.

He wasn’t wrong. The reason his words felt so cutting was that every one of them hit a nerve, each one striking at a vulnerability I’d desperately tried to ignore.

In recent days, I’d been quietly running from my own foolishness, blaming everything on Maverick’s cruelty and malice.

But could we have ended up here solely because of Maverick? Wasn’t I, too, accountable for how things had turned ...