Maya POV.
I felt rigid and stiff on the bed. Every muscle had hardened like stone, as if the air around me had frozen into a suffocating shell. The silence of the room felt heavier than usual, like a weight pressing against my chest. My heart skipped a beat, then began to pound in my ears, the ‘thump, thump, thump,’ growing louder with every second that passed.
Did he just say what I thought he said? No… I had to be imagining it. I was hearing things, hallucinating, maybe. My sleep deprived fantasies were conjured by my mind desperate for something it wasn’t sure it could have.
"What did you say?" I whispered, the sound barely escaping my throat. It didn’t even sound like me. The voice was too soft, too breathless, like it belonged to someone else entirely. Someone more fragile.
But th
