He was standing by the staircase with Charlene, a smile still playing on his lips from whatever they’d been laughing about. But when he saw me, his expression froze.
Charlene rushed forward. “Louise!” she cried, pulling me into a fierce hug. “I’m so sorry. I wanted to be there. You know how our parents are... they wouldn’t let me go.”
“It’s okay,” I whispered. I didn’t have the energy to resent her.
Phyllis stepped closer. My breath hitched.
“You look… okay,” he said flatly. “Not like in your last letter.”
That letter—filled with my worst fears, my hopes, the longing for someone to still believe in me—had never been answered.
Something in him had changed. Or maybe something had died.
He carried my bag to the room I used to call mine. Everything looked just as I’d left it, like time had paused in my absence.
I wanted to ask him to stay. Instead, he left.
Restless, I went looking for him. His car was still outside. My feet carried me down the hallway, past sleeping portraits and cold stone, until I reached the library. Voices leaked through the door—low, intimate.
I reached for the knob. Then froze.
Through the gap, I saw Charlene perched on Phyllis’s lap, her fingers twining in his hair as their lips met—slow, familiar, certain.
My breath hitched. My heart shattered.
The one person I had clung to in the dark—was never really mine to begin with.
Louise's POV
My fingers quivered as I brought the chilled glass of water to my lips, struggling to suppress the sobs threatening to rise. Across the room, Phyllis stood in the kitchen, casually preparing my favorite dish. He smiled, completely unfazed, as though nothing significant had happened—as if he hadn’t just torn my world apart moments before with a painful truth I never wanted to hear.
“I’m sorry I didn’t come to see you for five years, Louise,” he murmured, calling me by the nickname only he ever used.
He carefully placed the grilled beef on a plate, dusting it with spices and nestling a perfectly done sunny-side-up egg beside it. “You should eat more. You’ve grown so thin.”
I kept my gaze fixed on the plate, my fingers tightening around the glass like it was the only thing keeping me grounded. Inside me, my wolf stirred with fury, urging me to lash out, to scream, to demand the truth. But I didn’t give in. I just swallowed the sob building in my throat.