All Chapters of The Wrong Love : Chapter 11 - Chapter 14

I woke up and nothing was wrong.It felt so unfamiliar that I lay there a full minute just checking, running through the usual list out of habit — Ephraim, rent, Valerian, work — waiting for the day to hand me its first problem. Nothing came. Just morning light through the blinds and the quiet, strange sensation of a day that hadn't already gone wrong before I'd even gotten out of bed.I didn't trust it, exactly. Some old instinct in me kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, the way it always eventually did. But for once, I let myself have the quiet anyway, instead of spending it bracing for what might come next.I made tea I actually sat down to drink instead of gulping between tasks. I picked out clothes without rushing. Small, ordinary things that shouldn't have felt like victories, and somehow did. By the time I left for campus, the sky had that particular soft blue it gets before it fully commits to being a good day, and for once I let myself believe it might actually stay that

I asked for extra shifts the moment the café opened."I can't," my manager said, not unkindly, already shaking his head before I'd finished the sentence. "We just cut hours last week, remember? There's nothing extra to give you.""Even one more shift a week would help.""I wish I could, Zéphyrine. I really do." He looked like he meant it, which somehow made the answer worse instead of easier. "Try again next month, maybe."Next month wasn't going to help me by Friday.I spent my break doing math on a napkin, the kind of math that never comes out right no matter how many times you rearrange the numbers. Wages. Savings. What was left after Ephraim's medication, after the fee I still owed the university, after the two months of rent that had apparently vanished somewhere between my hand and Maevra's. Every column ended somewhere short of what I needed, no matter which numbers I moved around. I pressed the pen hard enough into the paper that it tore through on the last line, and I sat the