The next morning, the house felt colder, charged with the static of the previous night’s confrontation. I hadn't slept, and I suspected Nicholas hadn't either. The silence in the hallway when we passed each other felt heavy, a physical barrier I was terrified to break.
When I finally walked into the dining room for breakfast, the air was so thick it felt like I was wading through deep, dark water.
He was already seated, his posture rigid, his attention ostensibly buried in the morning paper. My mother was chattering away about her plans for the afternoon, her voice a jarring, cheerful contrast to the suffocating silence Nicholas and I were maintaining. It was a normal Tuesday morning, yet the entire fabric of our reality felt fundamentally altered.
I sat down, my movements deliberate.
