PART 2: “CALEB NEVER FORGAVE HIMSELF FOR WHAT HAPPENED THAT NIGHT.”

“No…”

“He was the one who pulled you toward the back door before firefighters arrived.”

The room tilted violently.

For ten years…

I had thought the firefighters saved me.

But buried somewhere deep inside my memory…

I remembered hands.

A boy’s hands.

Shaking.
Burning.

Pulling me across the floor while smoke swallowed the ceiling.

The officer’s voice softened.

“Caleb suffered burns to his shoulder and chest that night.”

I remembered something else suddenly.

Prom.

When we danced.

The way Caleb flinched when my hand brushed near his collarbone.

Oh my God.

My mother was sobbing quietly now.

“But why didn’t he say anything?” she whispered.

Caleb’s father looked destroyed.

“Because Mason threatened him.”

A silence fell.

Then:

“Mason told Caleb that if he ever spoke… your mother would blame him for everything.”

I closed my eyes.