He hadn't meant to type it. Not really. Or maybe he had meant it for weeks, and tonight was just the night the dam broke.
Arya nodded, picking at a loose thread on the couch. "The worst part isn't the comments. It's the searches. Someone types our names together, and they think they're finding a fantasy. But we're real. We've fought over a boy. We've cried in each other's cars. We've had to explain to our mothers why our names are permanently attached to each other on the internet." Searching for- lily rader arya fae in-All Categ...
He wrote: "We search for people in categories because we're afraid to search for them in silence. But silence is where they actually live. Where we all do." He hadn't meant to type it
Lily Rader stared back. Blonde, blue-eyed, a smile that seemed both rehearsed and genuinely amused. Next to her, Arya Fae: darker hair, sharper gaze, a tiny gap between her front teeth that the industry's Photoshop wizards had somehow missed. They looked like they could be sisters. Or rivals. Or something in between. Arya nodded, picking at a loose thread on the couch
Ethan closed his laptop.
And for once, he didn't look back.