“You’d embarrass me anyway,” he had said, almost casually. “It’s better this way.”
There are moments when something inside you doesn’t shatter—it settles.
Quietly.
Permanently.
That was one of them.
Back in the ballroom, he laughed easily, his arm wrapped around another woman like the space beside him had always belonged to someone else.
He didn’t glance toward the door.
He didn’t wonder where I was.
Why would he?
As far as he was concerned, I wasn’t coming.
Then the music stopped.
Not gradually—completely.
The kind of silence that makes people turn before they even know why.
