MELISSA‘S POV

I sank deeper into the couch, hugging a pillow to my chest as though it could anchor me. The city outside my apartment pulsed with life—honking cars, laughter echoing from the street below, the faint hum of neon signs—but inside, the silence pressed down too thick, too heavy.

My apartment wasn’t much. Cream curtains that swayed when the draft slipped through the window cracks. A sagging bookshelf that smelled faintly of old paperbacks I never had time to read. A ...