she had cried all th

e point the darkness outside her window softened into grey and then slowly into pale morning light, and she watched it happen without moving

pped expecting this room to feel like hers a long time ago, but this morning the foreignness of it sat heavier than usual. After today she would be in

there when something

the way you might slide food to someone you didn't want to face. She stared at it f

dn't even

se she

dress that said this is being handled without saying anything about the person wearing it. She al

the bed and

once. Zoe was the only person in her life who would have noticed the silence and worried about it genuinely, not because Chloe's absence was inconvenient but b

the door. Light.

w who it was be

already done, looking exactly like someone who had slept well and

looking around the room briefly

said n

d. Something crossed her expression. Not guilt. Som

's just a courthouse. It's not like

steadily. "Is there

all pause. "Lucien Grey is a serious man, Chloe. He's Cold. You know that right? People who work with him say he doesn't really care about the people around him." S

n her face. At the eyes that were watching just a lit

Amelia," she

e had expected more. Some crack, some reaction

e cruel. I just don't want you to go in there h

" Chloe said.

t, pulling the door almost closed behind her, and he

the silence s

crying. Tears were for people who still believed the situation could be changed by feeling it hard enough. She was

sat at th

s happening up here. She pressed her back straight and looked out at all of it and made herself a promise in the silen

hen disappear."

ime, she would walk out of whatever life they were putting her into and

d down at

her had left it for her. It was the one thing that had moved with her through every room, every house, every version of a life that never quite fit. She

ting like that wh

without waitin

dressed for an occasion he was treating like a busine

ng," he said with

idn't meet

ng she was bringing with her, her mother's bracelet al

ast him thro

ollo

morning she hadn't chosen, toward a life she hadn't asked for,

that wa