The words didn’t echo. They landed like stones in the sudden, ringing silence of her mind, shredding the fragile hope she had woven over three years. Every small kindness she had clung to, every polite nod she had mistaken for affection-it was all a lie. A transaction.
Nausea churned in her stomach. She remembered their wedding day, his cool, distant eyes, the way he’d told her to “remember her place.” This was her place. A shield. A placeholder. A thing.
She dug her fingernails into her palms, the sting a welcome, grounding pain that kept her upright. She forced her lungs to take in air. She forced her spine to straighten, inch by painful inch.
