Collins wouldn’t do this to me.
He wouldn’t.
“Am I, though?” Lee’s voice drops lower, more dangerous. “You sure about that, baby?” His smile is sickening. Twisted. Satisfied.
He reaches the bed and places one knee on the mattress beside me, the springs dipping under his weight.
Too close. Way too close.
My heart shatters.
Not slowly.
Not gently.
It shatters into a million tiny shards at my feet.
How can this be happening? How can any of this be real?
I love Collins.God, I love him so much.
And he?—
He loves me.Doesn’t he?
I know he does.I thought he did.
I believed him.He lied to me?
My vision blurs as tears spill over my lashes, sliding hot and unstoppable down my cheeks.
The room dissolves into a hazy smear of blue light and shadows.
My heart aches.
My lungs burn.
Nothing makes sense.
Nothing feels real.
And all I can feel is nothing at all—the crushing numbness spreading through me.
I didn’t know it was possible to feel this much pain, yet nothing at all.
It’s like my body has been hollowed out.
Like whatever part of me that knows how to react—how to fight, how to scream, how to run—has simply shut down.
Something brushes my face.
At first, I barely register it through the haze clouding my mind. But slowly, sensation seeps back in.
A hand. Rough. Not the kind of rough that comes from honest work, from long days under the sun and calluses earned with effort.
No. This roughness is different. It feels like it belongs to someone who has never held anything gentle in their life.
The hand moves through the dampness on my cheeks, smearing the tears that won’t stop falling. My breathing shudders, but my body doesn’t respond the way it should.
