She moved fast, shutting down the rumors and reaching out to The Cabinda University to get the nasty forum posts taken down. The students who’d been stirring things up online were all called out, too. And the girls who attacked Bonnie at the airport—Odette pulled some strings so they’d face real consequences.
Still, those were late attempts to make things right, too late to erase the hurt. When Odette stood in front of Bonnie and her parents, bowing in apology, Bonnie’s thoughts were a mess. She couldn’t help but wonder, if Hannah hadn’t just gone with the flow but had actually started that wave of online hate—would Odette have covered for her?
Would she have tried to smooth things over with money, begging Bonnie not to go after Hannah legally? Or would she have done what she always did in school, staying fair and never playing favorites?
Bonnie also wondered if Odette ever told Lawrence anything. Even if he’d fallen out of love, cheated, and just treated her as a game, why hadn’t he said a word to her from beginning to end? Maybe Lawrence hadn’t known about any of it at all.
Odette definitely had her own agenda. Of course she cared most about the girl she’d raised for over a decade, not Bonnie, who was still an outsider no matter what.
Bonnie never expected everyone to revolve around her, or always take her side. She just needed to know what really happened. But back then, nobody gave her an answer. That one accident—nobody saw it coming—and after that, there was this river between Bonnie and all of them, a gap that couldn’t be crossed.
Three years went by. When trouble hit again, it was Hannah—the same girl who’d tried to stir things up online—this time, she was the one who set everything on fire for real.
She planned everything so carefully, hoping she could walk away just like before, leaving chaos behind her. But this time, Bonnie finally saw it all for what it was.
No matter how much Odette and Carl wanted to protect their own, there was no way they’d just watch Hannah actually break the law.
And Lawrence—he wasn’t in the dark this time, either.

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