The world was never so quiet. Not the gentle type, not the comforting type, but the type that infiltrates under your skin, putting its arms around your neck, squeezing until every breath felt like a struggle.
I sat in that chair, my muscles rigid, my fingers curled into each other so tightly that the knuckles were white. Those words still rang in my mind, each sound a knife slicing through my head.
Elon was not returning.
I should have been weeping. I should have been screaming, crying, sobbing—but I wasn't. I sat there, every single regret hitting me, suffocating me, breaking me into a million shards. If I had returned home earlier. If I hadn't left in the first place. If I'd only been here, maybe—
The door creaked open.
I hardly heard the sound, my eyes frozen on the ground. But I f
