Sabrina sat on the same seat, at the same table, nursing a cup of coffee that had long gone cold, long after Esme had left. The café had emptied and refilled again around her, time moving in ways she refused to follow.
She tried to make head or tail of what had just happened—of how her last thread of hope had severed itself so cleanly, of why she had ever allowed herself to form such a relationship in the first place when it had never been meant to last.
Regret pressed heavily against her chest. She regretted every second of it. Every swallowed insult. Every moment she had smiled through Esme's condescension, through the deliberate belittling, the way Esme always found a way to make her feel smaller, lesser—even back when she had still been a designer at Whitman's, still had a title, still had a place in society.
