didn’t have to determine its ending.
I picked up the agreement.
Then I tore it in half.
Jonah watched silently.
“I didn’t stay because of the money,” I whispered. “And I’m not staying because I feel sorry for you.”
I placed the pieces on the table.
“I’m staying because when the truth destroyed everything around us, you were still the person I wanted beside me.”
He pulled me into his arms.
For the first time, there was no glass between us.
No guard watching the clock.
No contract telling us
how often we had to see each other.
Just two people who had been manipulated by the same family and had somehow found something real in the middle of all the lies.
Six months later, Jonah and I visited my mother’s grave.
Adrian stood beside us.
He placed white flowers on the stone and whispered an apology for all the years he had been absent.
I placed my hand over his.
“She knew you loved her,” I said.
For the first time since I had met him, my father cried
