Chapter 168

The glass never dissolves—it only settles lower, waiting. The idea of watching his face change, of seeing the protective brother who had always tried to shield me suddenly confronted with something so ugly and irreversible, kept the confession locked away where it festered quietly.

For the past few days, I have been having a series of panic attacks that come without warning, tightening my chest and stealing my breath until everything blurs, the room narrowing to a tunnel of sound and shadow where my own heartbeat drowns out everything else. My heartbeat becomes the only thing real, and even that feels like a threat. They strike at the strangest moments, sometimes while I’m folding laundry or staring out the window at the same unchanging view of the street below, and suddenly the air feels too thick to breathe. I would hold a shirt halfway folded, unable to remember what came next. I would wake up in the middle of the night, shouting, my voice raw and desperate, echoing off the