Debbie let out a slow, trembling breath that felt like it had been sitting in her chest for years, like the kind of breath you release when you finally accept that there is no graceful way to retreat from a confession once it has already slipped past your lips and exposed something fragile underneath.
She looked like someone who had already revealed too much and now understood that the only way forward was to keep going, because silence at this point would only make everything heavier and more suspicious than the truth ever could.
"Nathan has only ever had male assistants," she began, and although her voice had steadied compared to earlier, there was still that delicate fracture beneath it, that almost invisible tremor that betrayed how much this mattered to her.
"The only reaso
