Priscillia2 Ezema 的作品

Sophia POV"I'll do it," I say, before either of them can start on me first. "I'll marry Ethan Vale."That’s the first thing I say when I got to the sitting room, Vivian is in the sitting room when I walk in, and Emily is there too, which I wasn't expecting, curled into the same armchair she always takes like she's staking a claim on it. Vivian doesn't even look up from whatever she's reading on her tablet, like my entire surrender is beneath the effort of eye contact. "Not like you even had a choice." She clicks her tongue, sharp and dismissive, mtchewm, the sound she's made at me my whole life whenever I've dared to think I mattered enough to negotiate. "I don't know why you insist on saying it out loud like you're doing us some great favor.""I'm not doing it for you." My voice shakes, but I hold my ground. "I'm doing it for Lily.""Call it whatever helps you sleep." She finally glances up, eyes flat, already bored with the conversation. "Just make sure you actually go through wit

Sophia POVI wake up on Nora's couch with my mouth tasting like old crying and my neck bent at an angle that's going to cost me later. For a second I don't remember why I'm here instead of my own apartment, and then it all comes back at once, Julian, the nurses' station, my mother's hand across my face, and I have to sit very still and breathe through it before I trust myself to move.Nora is already awake. I can smell coffee before I even open my eyes all the way, and when I do, she's standing over me in yesterday's pajamas with two mugs, watching me with the kind of careful attention she usually saves for patients coming out of sedation."Hey." She sets one mug down on the table in front of me, close enough that I don't have to reach far. "You actually slept. I wasn't sure you would.""I don't even remember falling asleep." My voice comes out rough, scraped thin. "One second you were talking, and then I just…wasn't there anymore.""Your body shut the whole thing down for you." She s

Sophia POVThe rain hits hard before I reach the end of the driveway.My cheek still pulses where Vivian struck me. My chest feels tighter with every step.Ethan Vale — Emily's brother-in-law.I say the name once under my breath, and it means nothing to me. I don't have a face to put to it. Daniel's brother. A name mentioned in passing once or twice over the years, always at the edges of a conversation I wasn't really part of, never once a person I've actually stood in a room with.I always knew my place in that house. Emily got a car for her sixteenth birthday while I worked evenings for textbooks. Holidays she sat at my mother's right hand; I hovered near the kitchen — useful yet invisible. I built my life around being useful enough that maybe, someday, it would matter.I never imagined she would hand me off to a total stranger and call it a solution.I wipe rain from my eyes and keep walking. Stopping would mean feeling all of it at once.The rain soaks through my dress. Heat build

Sophia POVThe cab smells like old vinyl and someone else's perfume. My car is still wherever I left it after the hotel. I don't care.I don't remember giving the driver an address. I just know I can't go back to the apartment Julian and I shared, so I give him mine instead — the old studio I never quite let go of, the one with a bed I haven't slept in for months. He drops me at the curb and I let myself in still wearing the red dress, and I sit down on the edge of a stripped mattress in the dark because I don't have the strength to turn on a light.My phone starts buzzing before I've even set my keys down. Vivian's name flashes and disappears, flashes and disappears, over and over, and each time I let it ring out I feel a small, mean flicker of relief, like I've found the one door in my life I'm still allowed to close tonight. I have exactly one night off left before my next shift, and I had promised myself I would spend it grieving quietly, alone, where no one could watch me do it.

Sophia POVTwo days off. That’s all the hospital gave me after three back-to-back night shifts, and I’d guarded those two days like gold because they landed on our anniversary. Three years with Julian, and for once I wasn’t rushing home in scrubs still smelling like antiseptic.He’d called it in himself. “Let me surprise you this time,” he’d said, voice warm through the phone. “Just wait for me at home. Don’t ask questions.” I’d laughed and told him he was terrible at surprises, that he always caved and told me early. He swore this time would be different.I made the roasted chicken he can’t stop talking about, the one dish I actually got right on the first try. Then I wore the red dress he loves, the one he says makes me look like the day we met. I lit the candles, and then I waited.Seven came and went. Then eight. By ten I’d stopped setting the table. Something in my chest started to sink.At eleven pm my phone lit up with an Instagram notification. A follow request from an account