Chapter 169

DAHLIA

Silence came slowly.

Not the sharp, suffocating kind that pressed against my chest earlier, but a quieter one… thin, fragile, earned.

It settled after the tears ran dry. After my throat burned from screaming into a pillow I didn’t recognize anymore as comfort. After my body finally accepted that fighting everything at once would only tear me apart.

This is the time I need Izzy or Jack the most, but she’s got her own problems. I can’t even bring myself to think of hijacking her from Jack at the moment with the accusations she threw at me the last time. She must still be insecure.

I lay curled on my bed long after Sebastian left.

I knew when he left.

I felt it the way you feel a door closing behind you without hearing it—an absence, a shift in the air, a hollowing out. I didn’t move. I didn’t chase him. I didn’t regret pushing him away either.

Not yet.

Eventually, exhaustion dragged me into something close to sleep. Not rest