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• Feel Connected •
Twice Killed
*Backwards Book! Contributions will be for previous chapters until we get to the beginning!*
Detective Olivia Wingate had seen people slip through the cracks but something about Winnie Conner lingered. Something about her meticulously ordered life and a crime scene that felt less like a tragedy and more like a reckoning.
Winnie Conner disappeared into the shadows of her own life, retreating further each passing year. As Olivia pieces together Winnie’s past, she uncovers a woman who was not meant to be forgotten—who once burned with brilliance, only to be suffocated by a terrible secret.
Detective Olivia Wingate had seen people slip through the cracks but something about Winnie Conner lingered. Something about her meticulously ordered life and a crime scene that felt less like a tragedy and more like a reckoning.
Winnie Conner disappeared into the shadows of her own life, retreating further each passing year. As Olivia pieces together Winnie’s past, she uncovers a woman who was not meant to be forgotten—who once burned with brilliance, only to be suffocated by a terrible secret.
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Jun had been waiting in her apartment when she returned from work, suit jacket tossed over the arm of the couch, his phone abandoned beside an untouched takeout bag. She barely made it three steps in before he spoke.
“You didn’t even text.”
“I got held up,” she said, kicking off her boots. “It was a long day. The scene—”
“No. No more scenes. No more bodies. No more ‘I’m sorry, I couldn’t get away.’ Not tonight.”
He wasn’t angry. Not at first. He was tired. That made it worse.
“I’m trying, Jun.”
“No, Liv. You’re enduring. You’re surviving. But not with me.”
She stopped at the kitchen counter, leaning on it like a shield. “You knew what this job was.”
“I did. And I thought I could live with it. But lately, it feels like the job’s the only thing you let in.”
She turned slowly. “So what—you want me to clock out and pretend none of it matters? Pretend the world is fine without caring about the wreckage left behind?”
His expression cracked for the first time. “I don’t want you to stop caring about the wreckage. I just want to know that I’m not part of it.”
That silenced her. Because she didn’t know how to answer.
She’d stood at that same counter months ago and told herself that Jun was different. Grounded. Patient. A good man. She never imagined they’d become so brittle.
“I don’t know what you want from me,” she said finally.
“I want to know I matter. That we matter. I want to know I’m not some placeholder for the version of you that’ll never come back to.”
The air between them snapped. The heat in her chest rose with frustration, with panic, with all the words she didn’t know how to say.
“I never asked you to wait for me. If this is too much, then maybe you should go.”
It was a challenge. She expected a retort. A slammed door.
But Jun just stood there, quiet.
“I don’t want to leave,” he said, barely above a whisper. “But I can’t stay like this either.”
He picked up his jacket and left without another word.
The silence afterward had been unbearable.
Now, three days later, Olivia still hadn’t called. And Jun hadn’t either. She told herself it was fine. She needed space. Time to think. But really, she was avoiding the question that had been clawing at her since he walked out.
Was he already gone?
She pressed her forehead to the steering wheel, breathing in the faint trace of peppermint from her coat sleeve. Jun always carried peppermint gum. Said it helped him focus.
She remembered him once telling her: “You build walls so high, Liv, even you can’t see outside.”
He wasn’t wrong. She’d made a life out of standing on the other side of emotional barricades. She was good at solving other people’s tragedies. Her own? She didn’t dare look too closely.
She reached into the glove compartment and pulled out her phone. The screen was blank.
No missed calls. No messages.
She wanted to be angry at him for not reaching out. But she couldn’t.
He’d made his position clear.
If she wanted to keep him, she had to show up. Not just physically. Emotionally. Honestly.
Could she do that?
She didn’t know. The truth was: she’d never really tried.
A brittle gust of wind shook the car slightly. Olivia looked out at the edge of the creek. The surface was glassy, reflecting the dull gray sky. Still. Like nothing had ever happened there. Like time didn’t matter.
But she knew better.
Time mattered. Time ran out.
The last time she had seen Erin alive, she’d said the same thing to her—something about being too busy, too tired, too tangled in everything that wasn’t personal. Erin had smiled, her usual smile that mean she would put up with it, but she didn’t like it.
A month later, she was gone. Just like Daphne.
And just like Winnie, Olivia never got to fix it.
Now Jun might be the next person to vanish from her life.
And all she could think about was how easy it was to lose the people who mattered most. Not in dramatic explosions—but in the small choices. The missed calls. The silence. The space left unfilled.
She looked at her phone again. Opened a blank message.
Typed: “I messed up. But I don’t want to keep pushing you away.”
Then deleted it.
She wasn’t ready. Not yet. But maybe soon.
She tucked her phone away and reached across the seat for a leather-bound journal she’d taken from evidence two weeks ago. Winnie’s journal. It was full of heartbreak, of unresolved wounds. The kind of grief that corrodes from the inside out.
She got out of the car, letting the chill hit her hard and clean. The clouds had begun to part, letting thin streaks of gold push through the gray.
She breathed it in—deep and sharp and for once when it came to dealing with her own life instead of her own cases, she knew exactly she had to do.
1
2
Detective Olivia Wingate lingered outside the small cottage, the late autumn wind curling around her coat like unseen fingers. The case was over. The evidence was there. Justice, if one could call it that, would come in its own slow, methodical way. But none of it felt like enough.
She had spent weeks unraveling Winnie’s life, piecing together a story that had never been meant for her to tell. The world had moved on without Winnie, had let her slip through the cracks, unnoticed and unheard. But in the quiet of this little home, among the remnants of a life once full of promise, Olivia saw her. Not just the victim. Not just the tragic figure in a police report.
She saw Winnie.
A woman who had been luminous once. Brilliant and restless, fluent in dreams and foreign tongues, with a sharp mind that could slice through impossibility. The kind of person who should have left her mark on the world, carved out a legacy of ambition and artistry. Instead, she had faded. Slowly at first, withdrawing from the people who had once been her whole world, until she disappeared entirely.
Faded into obscurity under the weight of buried truth, only Winnie Conner’s silenced life remained. A life now reduced to the yellowed pages of a forgotten journal, left behind among the cold reality of a crime scene.
At the heart of it, there had been Daphne Langston. Olivia ran her fingers over the cracked leather journal in her hands, its worn pages heavy with the weight of confession. It was always Daphne.
Two girls, impossibly close—business partners, confidantes, sisters in every way but blood. Olivia could picture them in their youth, conspiring over coffee, mapping out their futures with reckless certainty. It should have lasted. It should have been a bond unbreakable.
But it had broken.
Winnie had retreated. And Daphne had let her go. Over time, she simply slipped out of Daphne’s life. Fewer calls. Texts left unanswered. Excuses carefully crafted to sound reasonable, even as they broke them both. A slow, painful retreat, until the distance became insurmountable, allowing the space between them to stretch wide enough to last a lifetime.
She then watched from the digital shadows as her dearest friend lived a life full of love, joy, and purpose, while she wasted away in isolation carrying the secret. The secret that had taken it all—her dreams, her youth, her ambition, her trust, her friend—all in one single, monstrous act.
One night. One betrayal.
No one—especially Daphne—could ever know the truth.
Winnie sacrificed everything—her friendship, her dreams, even herself—to protect people who had never even realized they needed protecting.
Winnie’s silence meant Daphne could remain untouched by the horror of the truth. She could live happily, unburdened, with her innocence still intact.
Silence was her act of love.
But silence demanded sacrifice and Winnie bore the pain alone, choosing the paralyzation of a life of isolation. She chose the torture of silence, locking the pain away, never telling anyone. She never thought, even for a moment, that anyone but herself should have to endure the pain. The pain, with the truth, she kept all for herself.
And then Daphne died.
Suddenly. Irrevocably.
With Daphne’s passing, something in Winnie cracked open.
She tortured herself with the inevitable questions that came with death. Was it quick? Was she scared? Could Winnie have helped? Could she have changed something, anything, to stop this from ever happening?
But so much time had passed. And now, there were no answers. No undoing. No making amends.
Olivia swallowed, staring up at the darkened windows of the cottage. She knew that feeling—too well. Sometimes, there was no going back.
But that line in Winnie’s journal cut her to the bone.
“When my beautiful Daphne’s life flashed before her eyes, was I even in it?”
Would that be us too? Olivia thought. Would our lives go on, years go by, to the point where, at the end, it was like we never even were?
Unlike Winnie, Olivia’s life wasn’t set in stone. Not yet.
There was still time. Time to face the truth. Time to choose differently. Time to make amends.
For Winnie, the betrayal had been too great. And the truth had come too late.
Olivia imagined Winnie inside, sitting at the old wooden desk, ink staining her fingers as she finally put her truth to paper. The weight of it must have been unbearable. The freedom of it, intoxicating. And the danger—inevitable.
Olivia had unraveled it all—the hidden journals, the unsent letters, the desperate final contacts. It had all led here. The truth was finally spoken. Winnie would not be buried in obscurity.
Her life had been taken away from her.
Twice.
But her voice would not be buried. Not this time.
Olivia turned the journal over in her hands, exhaling against the cold. She would make sure the world knew the truth. She would make sure Winnie Conner was remembered.
Tragedy had tried to silence Winnie’s voice.
In the end, it was all that remained.
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