Page 56 of Gamebreaker

The words replayed in my head, and horror crawled up my spine as I understood what I'd done. What had come out of my mouth while I was distracted, frustrated, overwhelmed.

I'd called her a professional victim. Dismissed her coming out. Her trauma. Everything that had cost her family, safety, the life she'd built.

I'd said it like it was nothing. Like it was a casual observation.

"Harper.” I reached for her, my stomach dropping. “I didn’t—”

She took a step back. “Yes, you did." Her voice was quiet. Shaking. It was so much worse than shouting. "You absolutely did."

Mia was moving toward us. Laine had gone pale. People were staring.

I opened my mouth, but Harper was already talking, her voice getting louder, carrying across the auction tables.

"You want to know about making everything about my trauma?" Her words were sharp, exact. "Let me tell you about actual trauma. Not the concept you're so scared of that you hide from your own truth."

"Harper, please, I shouldn't have—"

"Two years ago," she cut me off, "my fiancé, the man I trusted, the man I lived with, the man I was going to marry, eavesdropped on a private conversation in our own home. In the one place I was supposed to be safe."

No. No, please stop. I wanted to disappear. Wanted to take it back. Wanted to rewind sixty seconds and cut out my tongue before those words could form.

"He pretended to have headphones on while Mia told me about Laine's traumatic past. And then he used that information—that private, painful information, mind you—to write an article. Published it on the front page of the Fashion City Sun. Used someone else's tragedy to boost his career."

Laine was completely pale now. Mia was at her side. Everyone was watching.

"I ended the engagement that morning. Threw his ring in his face. Want to know what the worst part was? It wasn't that he betrayed me. It wasn't even that he betrayed Mia and Laine. It was that he did it in our own home. Where I should have been safe to let my guard down."

I felt sick. Actually, physically sick.

"And you want to know about my coming out? About making everything about being bisexual?" Her laugh was broken. "I lost my entire family, Cameron. My parents. My aunts, my uncles, my cousins. Everyone except my brother, who has to see me in secret because he's terrified our parents will cut him off too."

"Harper, I'm so sorry. I wasn't thinking.”

"You weren't thinking? You just casually called me a professional victim while looking at spa packages like you were commenting on the weather. You dismissed everything I lost, everything I chose, like it was nothing.”

Her eyes were bright with unshed tears. I wanted to sink through the floor.

"I chose to live honestly, even though it cost me everything. I chose authenticity over comfort. I chose to be myself even when everyone I loved told me I was wrong, broken, going to hell."

The ballroom was completely silent.

"So yeah, I post on Instagram. I document my life. I talk about being bisexual because for twenty-six years I pretended I wasn't, and that pretending nearly destroyed me. I make it public because hiding nearly killed me. And if that makes me a professional victim in your eyes, if my refusal to live in a closet makes you uncomfortable, that's your problem."

She grabbed her clutch, her hands shaking.

"At least I'm brave enough to be myself. At least I don't weaponize other people's trauma because I'm too terrified to face my own."

She walked away. The crowd parted. I stood there, frozen, unable to move or speak, just watching her disappear.

The silence was deafening.

I'd just—while barely paying attention, while distracted by her dress and the auction and my own discomfort—told a woman who lost everything for coming out that she made her entire personality about it. I'd dismissed years of pain and courage like it was an annoying personality quirk.

And I'd said it casually. Like it was nothing.

Like her trauma was nothing.

"You're an idiot," Isla whispered coldly.