The point had only ever been to win. To be, at last, the daughter who deserved us.

She could have simply been my sister. It would have cost her nothing, and it was the one thing she wanted that was actually on offer, and she threw it in the fire to chase the one thing that wasn’t.

My father kept his opinions. Victoria kept her cell. Julian kept the ruins of the life he’d chosen.

And I kept Oakridge, and my license, and my name — the one I’d apparently deserved all along, not because I’d outlasted anyone, but because I was the only one of us who had never once mistaken winning for being loved.

THE END.