I shoved his hands away, every nerve on fire. “Then we go back to the first month of this marriageperformance. Ignore me, and I’ll ignore you.”
“Lillian—”
But I was already walking away, my vision blurring. I didn’t stop until I reached my door. My hand shook around the handle, my chest throbbing. I turned back once, just long enough to see him standing there—frozen, helpless, like he wanted to say something but didn’t know how.
So I did it for him and slammed the door.
I leaned against it, the sound reverberating through my spine, and finally let the tears fall. They came in shaking waves, each one breaking over the memory of his voice, the echo ofI’m not divorcing youlooping in my head until it no longer sounded like mercy, but punishment.
LIKE AN IDIOT, I CRIEDmyself to sleep. Not the delicate, movie-scene kind of crying with silent tears glistening on pale cheeks—but the raw, ungraceful kind that left my eyes swollen and my throat raw and my pillow damp enough to wring out by morning. There was a reason every story warned girls not to make the first move. Rejection wasn’t cinematic. It washumiliating. It burned through pride, through composure, until all that was left was pain.
It hurt worse than my mother’s disapproval, which was saying something. Worse than Malik stringing me along for six months with his half-promises and late replies. Because this wasn’t just rejection—this was rejection fromhim. From the infuriating, arrogant, beautiful man across the hall who somehow managed to crawl under my skin and rearrange everything I thought I understood about myself.
But when the tears finally ran out, something colder began to settle inside me. A slow freezing that crept into the cracks, claiming space where affection had once lived.
He’d made me believe I could be special to him. He’d given me warmth in one breath, then snatched it away in the next. He’d looked at me like I mattered, told me I was light, only to smother me into darkness the second I found the courage to reach for him.
My family had taught me well: love was a hazard. A dangerous, unpredictable flame best admired from a distance. So when I finally tasted even a trace of it, I mistook that spark for salvation. They’d tried to raise me to be careful, quiet, and nottoo much—and I caught myself wondering whether, if I’d let them finish the job, I might’ve been protected from this heartbreak.
But the sharpest betrayal came from myself. For forgetting who I was. For letting some vexing, complicated, emotionally barricaded man shrink me. For letting his color-blindness seep into my perception, tricking me into seeing him through rose-colored lenses when he’d been gray all along. For falling for someone who could hold my soul in his hands and still pretend he didn’t feel its weight.
I’d held lives in my palms, stitched together miracles in sterile rooms that reeked of loss. I had faced blood and misery and death, and somehow thismanhad undone me more completely than any of it.
I stared at the ceiling until the first light began to slip through the blinds, washing everything in a soft, indifferent gold. My body felt heavy, my organs hollow, but somewhere deep beneath the exhaustion, a small ember of defiance flickered.
I sat up slowly, catching my reflection in the mirror. My eyes were puffy, my hair tangled, and my face looked almostunfamiliar—no longer broken, only weary from the constant breaking.
I fixed myself, got ready for the day, straightened my spine, and whispered into the morning air, “You’ve survived worse, Lillian Tariq. You don’t fall apart over men who can’t decide whether to hold you or let you go.”
When I finally opened the door, my resolve still raw and quivering at its edges, the universe decided to test me with a tray of breakfast sitting in the hallway like an apology in physical form. Two pieces of perfectly buttered toast, scrambled eggs that were probably still warm, sliced fruit, and a cup of orange juice that smelled sweet and freshly squeezed. On top of the clear plastic was a sticky note. Two words, written in that slanted, frustratingly neat handwriting that I’d come to know too well.
I’m sorry.
For a second, my chest double-crossed me. Something stuttered, a tiny shift, as if my heart wanted to believe that those words could unspool all the hurt between us. But I didn’t let it. Not this time.
Without hesitation, I stepped over the tray. My heel nearly brushed the cup, but I didn’t look down. I wouldn’t let myself. If I so much as glanced at that note again, I might forgive him before he even earned it, before he grovelled enough, before hebeggedon his knees for my forgiveness.
The kitchen greeted me the way it usually did—my coffee waiting in its insulated travel cup, the lunch he’d packed the night before stacked in the fridge, morestupidnotes. Proof of his care, his infuriatingly quiet brand of affection. But I wasn’t interested in gestures that came without words.
I left it all there—his apologies, my coffee, our silence—and walked out the door.
Kevin looked up from his desk as I stormed into my office, his grin already forming. “Morning, Dr. T. You look—well—lethally gorgeous today. Did your hot and broody husb—?”
“I need coffee,” I snapped, dropping my bag onto the counter with enough force to make the pens rattle.
He blinked. “Coffee?”
“Now.” My tone left no room for charm or humor.
His smirk faltered, confusion replacing it. “Okay, sure, but—”
“And Kevin,” I said, my voice lower this time. “Don’t ever mention my husband in my presence again.”
He froze, eyes wide, then nodded. “Copy that.”
As he disappeared toward the break room, I sank into my chair, fingers curling against the rim of my desk, trying to breathe past the twinge clawing at my throat. The practice droned around me—machines, voices, the faint echo of life continuing—but I felt like I was standing still, waiting for my pulse to stop reminding me of him.
I’m sorry.
