Page 50 of Override

Do I want to be here?

No.

But I want Ronan happy.

I want this marriage to work.

I want things to stop feeling so tense between us lately.

I want to stop disappointing him without understanding exactly how I’m doing it.

So instead of answering honestly, I lift one shoulder lightly. “It’s important to him.”

Sandra's face falls and she goes quiet again.

And in the silence that follows, I realize something unsettling: That’s the first time I’ve answered a question about myself entirely through Ronan’s feelings instead of my own.

The realization lodges low and heavy beneath my ribs before I can shake it loose.

Sandra looks like she wants to say something else.

Instead, she simply nods once and reaches for the towels stacked near the mirrored wall.

“We’re done for today,” she says.

I peel the gloves from my hands slowly while my eyes drift toward the security camera mounted near the ceiling.

The lens stares silently back at me.

Watching. Always watching.

And for one strange impossible second—the camera shifts slightly away from me before settling still again.

***

The shower should help.

Usually it does.

Usually twenty minutes beneath scalding water gives me enough quiet to settle my thoughts back into manageable places again, but today the conversation with Sandra keeps replaying in my head no matter how hard I try to let it go.

You don’t actually need me, right?

The question clings to me while steam curls thickly through the master bathroom mirrors.

Not because Sandra was accusing. Because she sounded confused. And that feels worse.

By the time I step back into the bedroom wrapped in one of the estate robes, exhaustion sits heavy in my bones in a way the workout never caused. Emotional exhaustion. The kind that settles behind your ribs and makes everything feel harder than it should.

The bedroom is quiet. Cold. Perfectly clean. Nothing in here feels lived.

I stand there for a moment staring at the massive walk-in closet before realizing exactly what I want.

Not designer cashmere. Not silk. Not the polished version of myself Ronan keeps slowly building piece by piece.

I want my hoodie. The old navy blue one my father bought me when I was sixteen after I spent nearly an hour arguing with him inside a tiny gift shop near Galway because they only had one left and it was three sizes too big.

“It’s ridiculous,” he’d told me while I hugged the thing dramatically against my chest anyway.