Chapter 31: The Wake of Silence
The house was quiet. Deafeningly quiet.
Henrick Freeman sat on the edge of their, no, it’s his bed now. The covers were barely disturbed. The pillow on her side remained fluffed and untouched, just as it had been since that night. Tiania’s scent, once faintly lavender and linen, had vanished into the sheets like everything else she took with her: the warmth, the presence, the quiet grace of her being.
He dragged his hands through his hair and stared at the blinking light on his phone.
No messages.
No calls.
No Tiania.
She was gone.
Gone, and for the first time in his life, he felt it hard.
It’s like she never exists. There had been anger at first. A childish flare of denial. How could she just walk away? How could she leave him like that, broken, confused, surrounded by lies and the echo of choices he didn’t remember making?
But the silence had stripped all of that away, leaving only the truth he didn’t want to face.
