Chapter Twenty-Eight
I didn’t move for a long time.
Not because I couldn’t.
But because I didn’t trust what would happen if I did.
The room felt different now.
Not physically.
Everything was exactly where it had been before.
The walls. The table. The window.
But something underneath it all—
something invisible—
had shifted.
And I could feel it.
Not around me.
Inside me.
I exhaled slowly, my fingers pressing lightly against my temple as if that would somehow quiet everything.
It didn’t.
Because the noise wasn’t loud.
It wasn’t chaotic.
It was controlled.
Too controlled.
And that was what made it unsettling.
“You said I chose,” I whispered into the silence.
My voice sounded steady.
But I could feel the tension underneath it.
The question.
The doubt.
Waiting.
And fo
