A month passed.
Time didn’t move the way it used to. It didn’t come in neat days with clear mornings and quiet nights. It came in waves. Some mornings I woke up disoriented, staring at the ceiling, unsure if it had been three days or three weeks since Zander found out about my real identity. Other days stretched so long I could hear my own breathing in the silence, slow and uneven, like the room was listening with me.
I didn’t go out.
Not once.
The curtains stayed half closed. Light slipped through in thin lines across the floor, shifting from one side of the room to the other as the hours passed. I watched it sometimes. That was how I knew the day was ending.
The first week, sleep refused to come. Every time I shut my eyes, I saw him again. The moment right before the gun went off. T
