Real.
I let the question sit for a second, because I don’t know how to answer it without everything coming with it.
“I’m…” I swallow, my voice catching slightly. “I’m trying to process it. Everything feels… like it didn’t happen to me, and then it hits all at once and I can’t breathe properly again.”
Her expression tightens.
“I can’t believe it was fucking Paul,” she says, her voice dropping, anger threading through it now. “Of all people, him?”
I nod slightly, the movement careful.
“Yeah.”
She shakes her head, her jaw tightening.
“If I ever saw him again, I’d kill him myself,” she mutters, and then glances at me, something shifting in her expression. “Although… judging by the way those three are acting, I’m guessing that’s not exactly an option anymore.”
I hold her gaze.
“No,” I say quietly. “It’s not.”
She studies me for a second longer, then nods once.
“Good.”
The word lands with a kind of finality that surprises me.
And then something in me breaks.
I reach for her, and she’s there immediately, leaning in carefully, wrapping her arms around me without touchinganything that might hurt, holding me in a way that feels familiar, grounding in a completely different way than the others have.
“I’ve got you,” she murmurs softly. “I’ve got you.”
I breathe her in, the comfort of something normal, something known, something that isn’t wrapped in tension and fear and control, and it loosens something in my chest enough that I can finally say what’s been sitting there.
“I haven’t been completely honest with you,” I admit quietly.
She pulls back slightly, just enough to look at me.
“What do you mean?”
I hesitate.
Not because I don’t want to tell her.
But because saying it makes it real in a different way.
“I’m married,” I say finally.
Her brows knit together immediately.
“What?”
“To Elijah,” I continue, holding her gaze. “We got married the night before everything happened.”
She stares at me.
Completely still.
