I didn’t cry. Didn’t scream. I just stood there.
“Fine,” I said, voice flat. “Whatever you want.”
He didn’t know what those three days were like for me. The hell I walked through. The way my tears soaked into a hospital pillow until I had nothing left inside me.
The love I had for him didn’t just fade. It died. I didn’t want his love anymore. Not if this was what it looked like.
---
That night, while I was unpacking in the guest room, he came to the door and leaned against the frame like nothing happened.
“Oh, Harmony,” he said, real casual. “Margaret’s got a therapy pet. You’ll take care of it.”
I froze. “What?”
The front door opened and out came a man in a raincoat, holding a thick plastic container with holes. Inside it was a massive python, coiled and twitching under the light.
I stumbled back, hitting the cabinet so hard my shoulder cracked. Hakeem knew what snakes did to me. He knew. After my dad died, my mom, Aziel, and I lived in this shack behind an old scrap yard. One night a python slid through the cracks in the floorboards. Wrapped around my ankle before I could scream. I still have the scar. Still remember the sound it made hissing in the dark.