Anna barely slept. The night had stretched endlessly, a long, tangled thread of tears, confusion, and the cruel echo of Ryan’s voice as he stood outside her apartment, soft, pleading, yet she couldn’t bring herself to open the door for him. She had closed that chapter of her life for good, and letting him in again was bound to break her. She had slammed the door in his face, pressed her back against the wood, and slid helplessly to the floor as her body finally betrayed her. Anna had cried her eyes out; she had cried for the relationship she had lost, if she could even call it that. Her mind had come to believe that Ryan was truly her man, only for it to turn out to be a lie. So she had cried, the kind of crying that shakes something loose inside you. The kind that leaves you empty. Her he
