(Hailey’s PoV)The morning light feels too still, too golden and too clean for what I feel inside.

It slips through the curtains and paints everything in this honeyed calm that doesn’t belong to me. The house is too quiet, except for the faint ticking of the antique clock in the living room below. I sit on the balcony, a cup of tea cooling beside me, untouched.

It’s the kind of morning that tries to convince you that life is beautiful.

The kind that makes lies sound believable.

I scroll ...