Merlina stared at the message for so long the screen dimmed and lit up again.
Alistair:
Hey Merlina, Dad's been asking about you. He wants to see you.
For a moment, her brain didn't move. Didn't process. Just… stopped.
Her father.
She sank onto the couch, the air in the apartment shifting, thinning around her as if it remembered everything she'd tried so hard to forget.
He wanted to see her.
This was the first time he had actually asked after so many years.
Her thumb hovered over the phone, but she couldn't type. Her hands shook too much. Because seeing him meant opening a door she'd welded shut for so long.
The realization of what had happened, of what he had done, had carved a wound in her heart that never healed. A wound that still bled if she even brushed up against the memory.
So she hadn't gone.
Hadn't visited.
Hadn't looked back.
Until now.
Her phone buzzed again, jerking her out of the spiral.
Alistair:
Lina?
You there?
