Three years.
I told myself I wouldn’t come back. I told myself the modeling contracts, the city noise, the men who paid to look at me but never really saw me, were enough. I told myself my mother’s voice had finally lost its power.
I was wrong.
The second I stepped through the front door of the house I used to call home, the air felt thicker, heavier, like it still carried every sharp word she’d ever thrown at me. Maria stood in the foyer in a cream silk blouse and tailored trousers, looking exactly like the woman who had spent eighteen years teaching me that love was conditional and beauty was a currency that could be revoked at any moment.
Her eyes dragged over me the way a butcher assesses meat.
“Jesus, Ariana. Did they stop feeding you in New York or are you just trying to look l
