“I fall down, Zara,” she chokes out, pressing a trembling hand to her collarbone. “And people tell me my suffering is just a necessary part of my spiritual journey. They tell me to breathe through it, to accept the universe’s plan, to find the lesson in the pain. Nobody jumps, nobody catches me, nobody spends a single sleepless night sitting in a chair making sure I keep breathing!”
The room feels unbearable, cramped, and suffocating. The air in the office grows so thick with her grief and hostility that it feels almost impossible to draw a full breath.
But I can’t bring myself to hate her. Not in this moment.
Because beneath all the insane spiritual babble, beneath the delusion, beneath the possessive, alarming claims on Locke, I can finally see the gaping, infected wound. She just wa
