There were a lot of things Paige Pierce could tolerate. Grief, heartbreak, loss—she’d dealt with them all in her own spectacularly dysfunctional way. But what she couldn’t tolerate was Enrique Montoya sitting outside Annie’s house in his pathetic little green car like some lovesick idiot on a goddamn pilgrimage.
She’d spotted him before she even turned onto the street, parked in the exact same spot he’d apparently been every day since Annie disappeared off the face of the earth. And maybe a more compassionate person would’ve found it sweet. Maybe they would’ve admired the dedication, the unwavering concern in the way he kept coming back, calling, waiting.
Paige? Paige just thought it was f*cking stupid.
Rolling her eyes, she walked right up to the passenger side of his car and yanked the door open, sliding in before Ricky could even react. He startled, eyes widening for a fraction of a second before groaning when he realized who it was.
“Jesus Christ, Pierce, what the f*ck—”
“No, you don’t get to talk,” Paige cut in, snapping her fingers in front of his face like she was training a particularly dumb dog. “Whatever self-pitying monologue you were about to hit me with? Save it. You’re going home.”
Ricky’s jaw clenched, his fingers gripping the steering wheel like he was physically restraining himself from punching something. Probably her. Which, fair.
“I’ve been coming here every day.” His voice was hoarse, edged with exhaustion. “Calling. She won’t pick up.”
“No sh*t, she lost her mom” Paige said flatly. “And you sitting out here like some sad f*cking rom-com protagonist is definitely the way to get her back, right? What’s the plan, Montoya? You wait here long enough, and she just magically comes outside, sees you, and decides you don’t make everything worse?”
The muscle in his jaw twitched. Paige leaned back, crossing one leg over the other.
“Look, I’m not saying you don’t care. I know you care. That’s the whole f*cking problem.” She gestured toward the house, where Annie hadn’t so much as cracked a window in days. “You think what she needs right now is you? After everything?”
That one hit. Paige saw it in the way Ricky flinched, even if he tried to hide it. He didn’t respond right away, just dragged a hand down his face like he was trying to rub away the weight of every bad decision he’d ever made.
“She’s shutting everyone out,” he muttered finally, staring at the house like if he willed it hard enough, Annie would just let him in. “I just… I can’t sit here and do nothing.”
“Good news: you don’t have to,” Paige said, reaching over and smacking his shoulder hard enough to make him wince. “Because I am. So go home, Ricky. She doesn’t need you hovering like a ghost. Not right now.”
She didn’t wait for an answer. She just got out of the car, slamming the door shut behind her before Ricky could say another word.
Because the thing was? Paige wasn’t sure she was what Annie needed either. But she was the only one who was going to force her out of this sh*t, and sometimes, that was the best anyone could do.
Inside was worse than she expected.
It wasn’t just that Annie hadn’t been answering texts. It was the silence. The suffocating kind. The kind that felt like grief had settled into the walls, thick and unmoving, refusing to let anything else exist in its place. The blinds were shut so tight that the air in the house was stale, like it hadn’t been touched by anything remotely fresh in weeks. Everything about the room felt stuck, frozen in time at the exact moment Annie decided to stop participating in the world.
For a second—a rare, fleeting second—Paige hesitated. Because maybe this was hypocritical of her. Maybe she had no fcking right to be here when she’d spent the last week avoiding her own sht like it was the plague.
She had her own reasons to lie in bed all day. She had her own reasons to disappear. She lost her father. Both of them. Two men, two funerals, two different kinds of grief pressing against her ribs so tightly she thought she might crack under it if she let herself feel it too long.
So yeah. Fck her life too. But whatever, life was sad; they all still had to get up in the fcking morning.
And Annie? Annie wasn’t getting up.
Paige’s eyes landed on the unmoving lump of blankets, barely even a person underneath it, and just like that, the hesitation was gone.
With a sharp tug, she yanked the blinds open, flooding the room with light.
“Well, this is a sight for sore eyes,” she muttered, scanning the mess around her with barely concealed disdain. Honestly, this was a fcking disaster, but Paige decided to tone her language down. Annie groaned in protest, squinting against the sudden brightness, and Paige rolled her eyes right back at her.
“Oh, no, no, we’re not doing that,” she continued, reaching forward to yank the covers off Annie before she could hide under them again.
Annie looked… well. F*cking awful, honestly. Her hair was tangled, her face hollowed, her clothes practically molding into her skin at this point. Paige exhaled sharply through her nose, lips pressed into a thin line.
She didn’t ask if Annie was okay. Because she wasn’t. And because the answer didn’t matter.
Somehow, through sheer force of will, she got Annie to agree to a shower. It was a small victory, but she’d take it. As Annie disappeared into the bathroom, Paige stood in the middle of the wreckage of what used to be her sister’s room.
And for a second—just a second—she let herself feel it.
The weight of everything.
Paige didn’t do grief. Not properly. She locked it up tight and buried it under drugs, bad decisions, and a little too much tequila on an empty stomach. But here, in this room where Annie had drowned in it, Paige felt the sharp edges of her own loss pressing against her lungs.
She ignored it. Because that’s what she did.
Instead, she turned her attention to the mess around her. Clothes strewn across the floor, containers of old food collecting dust on the nightstand, the faint, stale smell of nothing lingering in the air. Christ. This place really was a biohazard.
Paige wasn’t the type to clean. But she also wasn’t the type to let sh*t sit around long enough to become this. So she did what she could. Tossed old food in the trash, gathered the discarded clothes into a pile, wiped down the nightstand with the sleeve of her own hoodie.
And then she stood in front of Annie’s closet, debating.
Picking clothes for other people wasn’t exactly her thing. But she wasn’t about to let Annie crawl back into whatever rotting hoodie she’d been living in. Eventually, she settled on a sweater that looked somewhat wearable and a pair of jeans that didn’t scream I haven’t left my bed in weeks.
She knocked on the bathroom door and shoved them inside when Annie cracked it open. “You better not be putting back on those biohazards you’re mistaking for clothes.”
There was no argument. Not one Paige was willing to entertain, anyway.
She didn’t do soft. She didn’t do delicate. She forced people to stand up, even when they didn’t want to.
And hell, she forced herself to stand up too, didn’t she?
It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t gentle. But it was what Annie needed.
Hours later, Paige slid the coffee across the table in the middle of a too-bright, too-loud coffee shop, watching as Annie curled further into herself. She looked like she wanted to disappear. Like all of this—the noise, the people, the life—was too much.
Paige didn’t give her the option.
“Your mom would hate this.”
Annie flinched. Paige saw it. She also ignored it.
What? It needed to be said. It really f*cking did.
“Giving up and hiding away. This isn’t what she wanted.”
She had seen the video… Hell, probably the whole world had seen it by now. Her mother’s last speech. The one where she spoke about turning pages, about how endings weren’t really endings.
Annie’s hands curled into fists on the table. Her shoulders rose slightly.
Paige leaned back, fingers tapping against the side of her cup. “Sadie may not be here, and I am… I’m so sorry for that, but the least you can do is try to honor her wishes. She wanted more for you. If not for you, do it for your dad, Justin, Kyra. For your mom.”
And maybe… maybe Paige needed to do the same.
But she was better at giving the advice than she was at taking it.
Her voice, for once, wasn’t sharp. It wasn’t mocking or biting or laced with cynicism. It was just… honest.
And maybe that was enough. Maybe it had to be.