The silence pressed in on Willow like another weight she could not lift.
The room was not truly quiet. Machines hummed softly around her, the monitor at her bedside marking time with steady precision. Somewhere beyond the door, nurses moved through the corridor, their footsteps muffled, their voices low and efficient. Beneath it all, however, lay a hollow stillness that settled deep in her chest, cold and suffocating in a way sound could not reach.
She lay motionless, staring at the ceiling, her body heavy against the mattress.
Images replayed without mercy.
Christy stepping closer to Miles, their hands meeting with careful intention rather than instinct or surprise. Zane at the doorway, arms crossed, his face unreadable until that nod. Small. Almost imperceptible. Heavy enough to change everything. The sequence repeated again and again, each pass stripping away another layer of disbelief until the memory no longer felt unreal, only inevitable.
Her pulse thudded loudly in her ears, echoed faintly by the monitor. The ache in her ribs deepened with every breath, a dull reminder that her body was still paying for an impact she had not yet fully reconstructed. She squeezed her eyes shut, but the images persisted, sharp and unyielding.
It had all unfolded too quickly to feel real. Miles, always careful, always controlled, had taken her moment of uncertainty and turned it into certainty. Christy had stood at his side as if she belonged there. Zane had sealed it with a nod that cost him nothing.
You ended things. You said it was mutual.
The words replayed with cruel clarity. Calm. Reasonable. Delivered without hesitation. Impossible to dismantle in that moment. A blade disguised as explanation. Miles had not raised his voice or shown anger. He had simply spoken, knowing exactly how it would land, knowing she had no footing from which to push back.
Understanding crept in slowly, like a bruise darkening beneath the skin.
Miles had been cheating. He had already left. And now, when she was at her weakest, he had made it official in front of witnesses. He had rewritten the past while she lay injured and medicated, then watched as professionals nodded along and recorded it as confusion.
The doctor's expression surfaced in her mind. Kind. Dismissive. Reassuring in the way people were when they did not intend to listen.
Memory confusion is common.
As if heartbreak were a symptom.
Her jaw tightened.
She wanted to scream, to sit up and tear the wires from her chest, to force the truth into the room until it rang through the halls. She remembered him. She remembered everything. The dinners. The arguments. The way he had begun to look away weeks before the crash. The silence that had grown between them long before metal folded and glass shattered.
But she did not move.
Because when she pictured Miles again, the faint pity in his eyes and the quiet satisfaction he barely bothered to conceal, she understood something essential. If she told the truth now, he would still win. He would turn it into instability, into hysteria, into proof that she could not be trusted with her own reality. He would let the doctors nod and write and recommend rest while the version of events he had chosen hardened into fact.
She would not give him that.
Not yet.
She pressed her lips together until the sting grounded her. Tears burned behind her eyes, threatening, but she refused them. Pain was useful. Pain meant she still controlled something.
Shock hardened into anger. Anger sharpened into focus.
Zane's nod surfaced again, heavier now that disbelief no longer blurred it. He had not hesitated. Not even for a breath. Miles had spoken, and Zane had followed, loyal as ever.
Of course he had.
Zane had never liked her. He had never bothered to hide it. The sharp remarks at gatherings. The jokes that were not quite jokes. The way his eyes tracked her whenever she spoke, assessing and dismissive. The way he always stood just a little closer to Miles, as if staking claim. She had spent years pretending it did not matter.
Now she understood that it always had.
Too quiet. Too analytical. Too ordinary.
With one nod, he had helped erase her. Reduced her to a confused woman in a hospital bed, stripped of her own history. He had not merely agreed with Miles. He had enabled him. He had made the lie real.
That realization hurt more than Miles's betrayal.
This was not just a lover walking away. This was humiliation delivered by people who claimed to know her. A public undoing wrapped in calm voices and concerned expressions.
Zane must be pleased, she thought bitterly. Finally rid of me. Finally got what he wanted.
She turned her face into the pillow and breathed through the ache tightening her throat. The urge to cry pressed hard, but she swallowed it down. If they wanted to believe she was fragile, broken, compliant, she would let them.
For now.
Nurses came and went. Someone adjusted her IV. Another checked her vitals. They spoke gently, as if she were something delicate and unreliable. She answered when required, kept her voice soft, her responses measured.
A good patient. An easy patient.
The fluorescent light flickered once, then steadied. Somewhere down the hall, a phone rang and was answered. Life continued, indifferent to the quiet implosion taking place inside her.
Within her, something shifted.
The rawness of shock gave way to clarity. Not relief. Not acceptance. Something colder. More deliberate. She lay awake as hours passed, watching the monitor's glow mark time. Each second fell into place like water collecting in a basin, slow and relentless.
By the time dawn crept through the blinds and striped the room with pale gold, her grief had hardened into resolve. She stared at the ceiling, perfectly still, aware of the precise moment when heartbreak stopped bleeding and began to calcify.
Miles thought she was weak. Zane thought she was irrelevant. Christy thought she was forgotten.
She would let them.
Let them believe the version of her they had created. Let them pat her hand, speak softly, and walk away convinced the story belonged to them now. They had no idea what they had just set in motion.
She exhaled slowly, letting the last of her tears dry against her skin. Her face felt hollow, controlled, stripped of softness.
From this moment forward, she decided, no one would see her break.
Not Miles. Not Zane. Not anyone.
They would see gratitude, calm, compliance. And one day, they would see the reckoning.
Willow closed her eyes as morning settled fully into the room. The ache in her chest remained, but it no longer felt like pain.
It felt like promise.
When she finally spoke into the quiet, her voice was low and steady.
"You will regret this."