Chapter Thirty-Two: Fractures and Vows

                                        

                                              

She took a step closer, eyes big and glistening, mouth tugged into an imitation of concern. "Look, I know you hate me. But this isn't about us. I just... I need you to talk to Thomas. Just tell him to reconsider. A statement, a character reference, anything. It could really help me."
I looked at her, forcing my voice to stay even. "Are you out of your freaking mind!?"
She ignored that, voice dripping with false humility. "Please, October. You know him better than anyone. He'll listen to you if it comes from you."
"Absolutely not,"  I said, "It's disgusting you'd even ask me. Leave me alone."
Something flickered across her face then like glass cracking. The sweetness fell away, and what was left was sharp, brittle, venomous.
"You think you're so much better than me," she sneered, stepping closer, her perfume cloying, too sweet. "Don't you dare pretend he never wanted me. I had him. I had your precious Tommy in my hand, and he liked it. You were just convenience, a habit. You really think he loved you? He stayed because it was easier, that's all. You are pathetic."
Her words sliced clean through the air, sharp, hot, humiliating. They lodged somewhere in my throat, heavy with bile. I wanted to cry, to scream, to vanish. Instead, I stood frozen, letting the shame crawl over my skin like something alive. I turned to leave and call the girls, but this is MY battle. Yes, it would've been easier to walk away. To let her feel like she won but then I heard Dr. Mireille's voice in my head again, calm and unwavering: Silence doesn't erase pain; it preserves it.
"No," I breathed aloud, turning slowly, deliberately, until I was facing her fully, "You know what's pathetic, Laura?" I said, my voice low, cold enough to frost the air between us. She tilted her chin, trying to hold on to that practiced smirk, the one she wore like armor but I saw the flicker in her eyes. A tremor, quick as a blink.
"That you think having scraps of a man makes you powerful," I went on, my words slow and deliberate, each one landing like a stone dropped into deep water. "You think being the woman in the shadows makes you chosen. It doesn't. It just makes you disposable. You weren't loved, you weren't chosen. You were just... easy."
Her smirk faltered completely now, "You have no morals, no loyalty, no self-respect," I said. "It wasn't enough to betray a marriage, you had to do it twice. Father and son. You call that power?" I shook my head, letting the disgust bleed through. "It's not power, Laura. It's emptiness. Being so hollow inside that you'll do anything to fill it. You don't know how to be alone, so you crawl into the cracks of other people's lives and then you act like it makes you special."
She opened her mouth again, breath catching, but I didn't let her speak.
"You dress it up in lipstick, a tight dress, and a practiced laugh. You call it confidence," I said, my voice dropping, turning almost pitying. "But it's just desperation, Laura and no matter how many times you pretend otherwise... deep down, you know it too.  You're just a horrible decision. The worst chapter in his life, yes, but that chapter is closing."
Her jaw tightened, but I didn't stop, "He's been working to come home to me. To earn his place again and it's working, Laura. Slowly. Carefully. I'm learning how to let him back into my heart," I said, feeling the burn of it in my chest. "But you? You're doomed to your own long, lonely, pathetic 온라인카지노게임. I won't let you crawl back into my life. I won't let you keep trying to burn down what's left of it, either.  You're just a footnote in my 온라인카지노게임, Laura. A blur, so don't you ever think you can use me to get to him again. Don't speak my name like it gives you leverage. You're not worth the breath."
I turned. I didn't need to see her face anymore. Whatever satisfaction she used to pull from mine, she wouldn't find it now. I walked out, heart pounding, fingers trembling from the aftermath but my spine was straight. My steps were solid. I went back to where Beth and August were still sitting. The noise of the place felt suddenly too loud, too chaotic. The laughter, the clinking glasses, the music pulsing through the speakers, it all pressed in on me, like the room was shrinking.