SELENE’S POV
The decision didn’t come to me all at once, even Lucas hadn't agreed to meet with me right away but I knew that he would want to meet me now that I had expressed my intentions of leaving Dante. I had always known that was what he wanted and he hadn't tried to keep that from me. It didn’t arrive in a dramatic moment of clarity or with the thunderous certainty that stories liked to promise. It came quietly, in pieces in the hollow ache in my chest after Dante’s accusations, in the suffocating silence of his room, in the way he slept beside me every night without ever touching me, without ever reaching for me as if I were something he wanted.
I lay awake long after he fell asleep, staring at the dark ceiling above his bed, listening to the steady rhythm of his breathing. Every
