"You think I would want to spend the rest of my life with you?" Evans's voice was like a serrated blade, cutting through the hazy air of the dream. "You disgusting, cheap thing. Your friend... she gives me peace. You give me nothing but misery. It's not my fault she gave me what you couldn't."
Maya felt the familiar, suffocating weight in her chest. She felt small, reaching out for a man who was already halfway out the door.
"Please don't leave me," she heard her own voice plea, sounding pathetic even to her own ears. "I promise I'll change. Teach me how to love you. Please... I love you. Don't leave me."
Evans didn't even turn around. He just adjusted his watch—the one Eleanor had bought him with money Maya had lent her. "I'm fed up. I don't love you anymore."
"Don't walk out on me, Evans!"
Brrr-ring! Brrr-ring!
The harsh blare of the alarm shattered the memory. Maya's eyes snapped open, her heart racing against her ribs. Her pillow was damp, and her throat felt tight.
"Maya, wake up! It's a new day. Get up, you know what time it is!"
Kim's voice was followed by the aggressive shhh-t of the curtains being thrown open. A beam of unapologetic Monday morning sunlight hit Maya right in the face.
Maya groaned, throwing an arm over her eyes. She wanted to crawl back under the covers and hide, but the dream was still clinging to her. It was frustrating. It had been months, yet Evans was still finding ways to torment her in her sleep.
Evans—the man she thought was her soulmate—had been systematically dating her best friend, Eleanor, behind her back for a year. The "friend" she had shared her secrets and her home with had stolen her life, and even now, they were living rent-free in her nightmares.
"What are you thinking about, Maya?" Kim asked, checking herself out in the mirror as she smoothed down her hair. "Don't you have work today? It's Monday!"
Maya rubbed her face, trying to shake the image of Evans's cold back.
"We need money to pay the bills," Kim continued, her tone shifting from energetic to worried. "The electricity bill is piling up. At this rate, we might actually get kicked out."
That brought Maya back to reality faster than the sunlight did. "What time is it?"
"It's 10:00 AM," Kim replied, popping a bobby pin into her hair.
"Ten?! Why didn't you wake me up earlier?" Maya scrambled out of bed, her feet hitting the cold floor as she grabbed her robe and hurried toward the bathroom.
"I tried! You were mumbling in your sleep again," Kim called out over the sound of the running shower. "I figured you needed the rest, but the landlord doesn't care about beauty sleep!"
The steam from the shower filled the small bathroom, but Maya barely felt the warmth. As the water pulsed against her back, her mind drifted back to the hallways of her college days.
Back then, she and Evans were like yin and yang—impossible to separate. He had been the center of her universe, the one person who actually seemed to see her. They had been classmates, always sitting in the same row, sharing note, inside jokes and letters back then , everyone had thought they were dating.
She remembered the day he'd asked her to be his girlfriend. They were sitting on the library steps, the sun hitting his face just right. She had said no. Not because she didn't want him, but because she was terrified of losing focus. "After graduation," she had promised. "I don't want anything to clash with my studies. Let's just finish this first."
And Evans had waited. Or at least, she thought he had.
He had always put her first—or so it seemed. When she'd lost her tuition money in a panic during sophomore year, he was the one who stepped up, promising to find the cash. And he did. He was the author of all her "firsts": her first real birthday gift, her first red rose on Valentine's Day.
Then came Hailey.
Hailey had entered their circle late, slipping in with a bright smile that Maya had mistaken for genuine friendship. Before Hailey, it was just Maya and Evans. But slowly, the "we" became a "group of three" Everything Evans did for Maya—the coffee runs, the late-night study sessions—started to project onto Hailey, too.
Maya hadn't noticed. She had been too blinded by the novelty of being cared for. They say the primary source of love should come from your family, but for Maya, that well had always been dry. She'd grown up in a house where affection was a foreign language. Maybe that was why she was such an easy target. She had never felt love from the people who were supposed to give it by blood, so when an outsider offered it, she didn't just take it—she inhaled it.she had love Evans with all her heart, she still love him.
She hadn't seen the way Hailey looked at him when Maya wasn't watching. She hadn't seen the dots that were now, years later, finally connecting in a painful, jagged line.
A loud bang on the bathroom door snapped her back to the present.
"Maya! Seriously, the water bill!" Kim's voice muffled through the wood. "You've been in there for twenty minutes.
Maya turned off the faucet, the sudden silence of the bathroom feeling heavier than the noise. She wiped the fog from the mirror with her palm. The girl looking back at her wasn't the naive college student who believed in "yin and yang" anymore
I'm coming," Maya called out, her voice raspier than usual.
Maya stepped out of the bathroom, the steam still clinging to her skin. She dressed quickly in a pair of dark slacks and a crisp white shirt—her "armor" for the day. She grabbed her laptop, checked her bag for her measuring tape and high-intensity flashlight, and made her way to the small corner of the apartment she called her office.
She needed to make money. It wasn't just about the electricity bill anymore; it was about reclaiming her dignity. She needed to get back on her feet so she never had to feel as small as she did in those dreams.
Just as she sat down at her desk, her phone began to buzz, vibrating against the wooden surface. She glanced at the screen. Father.
Her heart sank. She didn't want to pick up, but the guilt—that old, familiar weight—forced her hand.
"Maya," her father's voice boomed before she could even say hello. "You forgot you have a father? You never visit. Is that how you were trained? To ignore your own blood?"
Maya closed her eyes, leaning her forehead against her palm. "I've been busy, Father. I'll visit when I have the time."
"Have the time? People make time for what matters, Maya. Your brother found time to—"
"Hello? Hello?" Maya interrupted, her voice fake-straining. "Father, I can't hear you. The signal is breaking up. Hello?"
Without waiting for his response, she tapped the red icon. The silence that followed was deafening.
"Ughhh," she groaned, dropping the phone onto the desk.
Maya stared at the blinking cursor on her laptop, but she didn't see the screen. Her father's voice was still echoing in her ears, bringing up the old, jagged edges of her history.
My life has always been complicated.
I grew up in a small countryside town where secrets didn't stay secret for long. Everything I knew about my parents started with a cliché: high school sweethearts. But the romance ended the moment my mother found out she was pregnant. My father, the man who supposedly adored her, denied the pregnancy immediately. That denial was the spark that led to the chaos of my existence.
My mother became just another "teen pregnancy" statistic in a town that loved to whisper. She didn't just lose her reputation; she lost the love of her brothers and sisters. I can still imagine them standing in their small living room, shouting at her: "We had to stop our education to make sure you had the best! We believed in you! We thought you were the one who was going to make our lives easy, and you went and got pregnant?"and we just lost father"you've disappointed us.
The weight of their disappointment broke her. She had to drop out of school, trading her textbooks for long shifts to cater for herself and the life growing inside her. Meanwhile, my father simply moved on to the next girl, as if my mother were a lead he had successfully erased.
Even now, I struggle to understand it. My mother was pretty, elegant, and sophisticated—the kind of woman who commanded respect the second she walked into a room. How could a lady like that end up like this?
i always thought that being the woman she was, she would have just terminated the pregnancy. It would have been the logical choice to save her future. Well, it's a good thing she didn't, or there wouldn't be a Maya today. But knowing I was the reason her "elegant" life crumbled... that's a debt I've been trying to pay back since the day I was born.
Maybe that's why I let Evans treat me the way he did. I was so used to seeing love as a sacrifice, as something that causes "misery," that I didn't recognize the red flags until they were wrapped around my throat.
I shook my head, clearing the thoughts. No more looking back
I was tired.i was tired of the constant criticism from a family that only called when they wanted to complain. I was tired of Evans and Hailey haunting her sleep. But mostly, she was tired of the hustle.
Being an independent estate liquidator in a modern city was a brutal game. It was hard to find high-end jobs that actually paid the bills, and lately, she hadn't had a single breakthrough. She was talented—she could spot a counterfeit Tiffany lamp from ten feet away—but talent didn't pay the rent.
It seemed like life was perpetually unfair. Every time she took two steps forward, the world seemed to shove her three steps back. Why do I keep falling? she wondered, staring at her blank laptop screen.
Then, an email notification popped up in the corner of her screen.
Subject: URGENT - Estate Liquidation Inquiry: Rosewood Manor From: Clarke & Associates
Maya's breath hitched. Clarke & Associates was one of the biggest legal firms in the city. She clicked it open, her eyes darting across the text. Immediate start. High-value inventory. Direct commission.
she looked at the email from Clarke & Associates again. Rosewood Manor. If I landed this, I could send money home. I could prove to my father and my judgmental aunts and uncles that my mother's "mistake" was actually their greatest success.
I grabbed my keys and headed for the door. "Kim, I'm heading out! Wish me luck!"even though I didn't get a response from Kim.
As I stepped out into the humid Monday morning air, I took a deep breath. Rosewood was waiting. And for the first time in a long time, I felt like I was running toward something, instead of just running away.