Chapter 177
~ Octavia ~
The silence of my bedroom was a fragile bubble, waiting to be burst by the reality of the world outside. I sat on the edge of my bed, eyes burning as I stared at the letter—the first and last I would ever receive from Franklin. It was a physical weight in my hands, heavy with the ink of words I had spent months trying to ignore.
I couldn't wrap my mind around the finality of it. My stubbornness had been my armor, but now it felt like my shroud. I had ignored his calls, dismissed his presence, and walled myself off behind a barricade of resentment. I had clung to the ghosts of the past so tightly that I had missed the man standing right in front of me.
Outside my door, the low murmur of my parents' voices drifted in. They spoke in hushed, clinical tones about sleeping pills and stress levels, worried that my recovering brain couldn't handle the trauma. They wanted to sedate the pain; I wanted to scream into the void.
