ELENA

The days had started blending together again. Same walls. Same routine. Same silence that filled up every corner of this house like thick fog. I kept my head down, kept to myself. Ever since that night with Dominic, I’d been walking a little more carefully—not because I was afraid, but because something had shifted. In him. In me. In all of it.

But Mason… Mason had been steady.

After I told him I couldn’t see him, couldn’t go behind my husband’s back, I expected things to ...