Lucian
When she was done packing, Tina turned to face us—Mara and me.
Her eyes were swollen, red-rimmed and glassy. Her hands clutched the straps of her bag like they were the only things anchoring her to the ground.
“I’m sorry… for everything,” she said, her voice cracking under the weight of her confession. “I guess I got carried away. I wouldn’t call it love. It was… selfishness. Anger. Ego.”
She took a breath and wiped her face with trembling fingers.
“Seeing my son in the ICU made me realise just how stupid I’ve been. You treated me so well, Lucian… and I knew—deep down—I would never find someone who loved me that way. But I let the world get in my head. People talked. They said you’d never amount to anything, and I believed them.”
I didn’t interrupt. I couldn’t. The words were
