Night fell before she realized that the day had passed.
Catarina hadn't moved for hours.
Lying on the bed, eyes open, she stared at the ceiling as if the answer to all this chaos could be written there.
But the ceiling remained silent.
The sounds of the city filtered through the windows: an engine starting, a distant siren, laughter fading away in the street.
Ordinary sounds that seemed to belong to another life.
Everything inside her had stopped somewhere between the Ashbourne house and the train station platform.
She finally got up, unsteadily, and turned on the light.
Her reflection in the mirror startled her.
Her features seemed different, not older, just more distant.
As if part of her had stayed behind in that house that wasn't hers.
Her phone vibrated on the nightstand.
She jumped, then sighed.
Not a message from Althea, not yet.
Just a useless notification.
She put it down and turned off the screen.
The silence returned, louder.
It filled everything: her thoughts, her chest, her hands.
She walked to the bathroom.
The cold water on her face felt good.
But when she looked up, the circles under her eyes looked like they had been drawn in ink.
She stood there for a long time, looking at herself.
Searching that tired face for the girl she had been before him.
That was the worst part.
He hadn't taken anything tangible from her.
Just her center, that calm light she had carried before.
Now, all that remained was the burning sensation.
She put on a loose sweater and sat down by the window.
Outside, the snow continued to fall.
Each flake seemed to whisper something she refused to hear.
She opened her notebook.
The pages were blank.
And for the first time, she didn't know what to write.
Usually, the words came on their own.
But now, everything seemed too big for paper.
Too vast, too dangerous.
So she just wrote:
"I'm back. But not whole."
She put down the pen and buried her head in her hands.
Her fingers were shaking.
Not with anger, not with fear, just with immense fatigue, the kind you feel when you've loved too much without the right to say so.
An hour passed. Maybe two.
The world outside was falling asleep.
She finally got up, grabbed the blanket from the sofa, and curled up in it.
The ticking of the clock reminded her of the sound of the piano.
That soft, slow rhythm that used to calm her.
But now, every beat hurt her.
She closed her eyes.
And in the darkness, it all came back.
His voice.
His gaze.
The fire in the fireplace.
She tried to convince herself that it was over.
That what she was feeling was just a remnant.
But deep down, she knew.
You don't come out of a forbidden love unscathed.
You just walk away from it.
And in the silence of her apartment, she understood something:
This wasn't the end of their story.
It was the beginning of the consequences.