The moment Amelia entered her room, she closed the door with a soft, final click and leaned her back against the dark wood. She stood there for a long beat, her chest rising and falling in the heavy stillness of the apartment.
The silence felt thick, punctuated only by the distant hum of the city. She walked over to her bed and sank onto the mattress, her thoughts a tangled mess of the conversation she’d just left behind.
“You couldn’t even call me,” Iris’s voice echoed in her mind, laced with that rare, sharp hurt.
Then came Eli’s observation, clinical and true: “You’ve changed.”
Amelia exhaled a long, shaky breath before falling back onto the pillows. She stared up at the ceiling, watching the shadows of passing cars flicker across the white plaster. They weren’t wrong. She had
