She was wearing Ethan’s shirt, barefoot, her long auburn hair perfectly styled despite the late hour, a smile playing on her lips that wasn’t nervous or apologetic, but triumphant, the smile of someone who believed she had just upgraded her life at another woman’s expense.
Maya opened her mouth, not to beg, not to scream, but to ask the kind of practical question only someone in shock would think of, something small, something manageable, like where she was supposed to go with a newborn in the middle of a blizzard.
Lila stepped forward instead.
She didn’t shout.
She didn’t insult her.
She didn’t need to.
She spat.
It was quick, deliberate, the thin line of saliva landing on Maya’s cheek and sliding downward, cold against already numb skin, and it wasn’t the act itself that cut the deepest, but the message behind it, sharp and unmistakable: you are beneath me.
Ethan laughed.
Not awkwardly. Not apologetically.
He laughed the way someone laughs at an inside joke, the way someone laughs when they believe they’re on the winning side of history.
That sound followed Maya as the door closed behind her, the lock clicking into place with a finality that felt like punctuation at the end of a sentence she hadn’t agreed to finish.
