The Parker household felt different in a way Lillian couldn't quite name.
It wasn't loud.
It wasn't busy.
It was simply… steady.
A kind of normality that didn't ask anything from her the moment she walked through the door.
Caroline noticed her immediately.
Of course she did.
Lillian didn't even need to say anything before her mother's expression softened.
"You're tired," Caroline said gently.
Lillian offered a small nod.
"I'm fine."
Thomas gave a quiet, knowing look from the armchair near the window.
"You always say that when you're not."
That almost made her smile.
Almost.
Lillian sat down slowly at the kitchen table, her hands folded in her lap for a moment like she didn't quite know what to do with them.
For a while, no one pushed her.
Caroline poured tea.
Thomas remained quiet.
It was the kind of silence that didn't demand filling.
Eventually, Caroline sat opposite her.
"Do you want to talk about it?" she asked softly.
Lillian hesitated.
Not because she didn't want to talk.
But because she didn't know where to start anymore.
Finally, she exhaled.
"I don't think I did the wrong thing," she said quietly.
Caroline didn't respond immediately.
She simply waited.
Lillian's fingers tightened slightly.
"I just… don't know if I handled it the right way."
Thomas leaned forward slightly.
"There's a difference," he said calmly, "between doing something for the right reason and it feeling right afterwards."
That landed quietly.
Lillian looked down at her hands.
"I couldn't stay in something where I didn't understand where I stood anymore," she admitted.
Caroline's expression softened immediately.
"And you shouldn't have to," she said gently.
Lillian nodded faintly.
"But I still care about him," she added, quieter now.
That part was harder to say out loud.
Caroline reached across the table and placed her hand over Lillian's briefly.
"I know."
A pause.
Then Thomas spoke again, carefully.
"He's not someone who processes things like most people do."
Lillian looked up slightly.
"I know that."
Caroline nodded once.
"And you didn't leave because you stopped caring," she added.
"You left because you were exhausted."
Lillian swallowed.
That word again.
Exhausted.
It fit too well.
At the same time, across the city, Sebastian Wolfe's world had narrowed to a single room.
His bedroom.
Curtains half drawn.
Light filtering in too softly to feel like morning or afternoon.
Time didn't feel real anymore.
It hadn't for days.
Sebastian lay on his side, unmoving.
One arm resting loosely near his waist.
The other beside him on the bed, fingers barely curled.
The room smelled faintly of untouched air and stale sleep that never fully arrived.
On the bedside table sat a bottle of whiskey.
Half-considered.
Rarely touched.
Not because it helped.
Because even that had started to feel pointless.
He stared at nothing.
Not the ceiling.
Not the wall.
Just space.
Empty and unchanging.
Sleep hadn't come properly in days.
When it did, it wasn't rest.
It was fragments.
Memory.
Noise.
Her voice sometimes, indistinct but close enough to make waking worse than sleeping.
"I don't know what I would say when I see him."
That line played again.
Uninvited.
Persistent.
Sebastian closed his eyes briefly.
Then opened them again.
No difference.
No relief.
Just continuation.
His throat tightened slightly, though he didn't move.
And then—
his mind did what it had been doing more often lately.
It turned inward.
Too inward.
I wasn't enough again.
The thought didn't arrive dramatically.
It simply settled.
Like it had been there waiting.
He stared at the ceiling now.
Finally.
The words continued without permission.
She left.
His jaw tightened faintly.
"No," he muttered under his breath.
But it wasn't a correction.
It was resistance.
His mind ignored him.
She left after everything.
After her birthday.
After the necklace.
After the time he thought things were… stable.
That word felt almost laughable now.
Stable.
His fingers flexed slightly against the bedsheet.
Why then?
Why after that night?
He replayed it again.
Her smile.
The way she looked at him.
The way she stayed close.
The way nothing about her felt like it was ending.
So why?
His breathing shifted slightly.
Uneven.
Not fully unstable yet.
But no longer controlled either.
And then his mind offered something worse.
Not truth.
Not logic.
Just possibility.
What if it wasn't what you thought it was?
Sebastian went still.
His eyes narrowed slightly.
Another thought followed immediately.
What if she never… fully meant it?
Silence.
That idea sat in his chest in a way that felt sharper than pain.
Because pain implied loss.
This implied something else.
Misunderstanding.
Replacement.
Conditional presence.
People who stayed only until something better or easier appeared.
His fingers curled slightly.
Slowly.
He had seen that pattern before.
Repeatedly.
Work.
Alliances.
People who smiled when they needed something.
People who left when they didn't.
His throat tightened.
And the thought came again.
Worse this time.
Maybe you were only useful when you were stable.
Sebastian's breath hitched faintly.
Not fully a gasp.
Not fully controlled.
Something in between.
He stared upward.
Eyes unfocused.
And then—
a sound left him.
Not laughter in the normal sense.
Not humor.
Not warmth.
It was low.
Detached.
Broken at the edges.
It started softly.
Then grew slightly.
Cold.
Empty.
Almost unfamiliar even to him.
Sebastian laughed.
Once.
Then stopped.
The silence that followed felt heavier than before.
His expression didn't change much after that.
Only his eyes did.
Less certainty now.
Less structure.
More distance from something that had once felt solid.
He turned his head slightly toward the bedside table.
The whiskey bottle sat there.
Still.
Waiting.
But he didn't reach for it.
Not yet.
Instead, he simply lay back again.
Staring.
Quiet.
Because now there was a new problem forming underneath everything else.
Not just that she left.
But that he no longer trusted what any of it meant.