Theron's fingers trembled.
A family of her own…
She called herself an orphan, and now she was speaking of a family as though she had already decided she would build one without him. He could understand that yearning. He had once wanted the same thing, had once looked at other people and wondered what it would be like to belong to someone, to be wanted without condition.
So was she wrong to want it?
No.
And yet it hurt.
It hurt in a place so deep inside him that he had not known it existed. He had never felt anything this sharp before, not even when people mocked him for being an orphan, not even when they looked at him as though he had been born lacking something essential.
He knew he would marry soon.
Naturally, so would she.
She would marry another man, laugh with him, argue with him, care for him in small ordinary ways, and grow old beside him until her life no longer had room for him at all.
