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Chapter_97
Alexander studied her for a moment, his expression unreadable, as if he were weighing her words against something far heavier in his mind. Quinn, caught in his gaze, felt as though she were being slowly unraveled, thread by thread, each word she signed met with silence. The warmth from the blanket he had draped over her earlier now seemed like a distant comfort, and her heart felt inexplicably heavy.
“You don’t know?” he repeated slowly, his tone colder now. There was an edge to his words, a thinly veiled frustration that made Quinn hesitate. She wasn’t sure what he expected from her, but the silence between them stretched far too long.
Quinn nodded, lowering her hands. “I don’t know what I want anymore,” she signed, her voice lost in the movements of her fingers. The words hung in the air, stark and exposed. “I don’t even know what I’m supposed to want.”
There it was—the truth she had been running from. Quinn had always followed the path laid out before her: marry Alexander, stay quiet, endure. But what was left for her? She wasn’t sure where the lines between her desires and his expectations began or ended. She had been living in the shadows, trapped between roles she hadn’t chosen.
Alexander’s gaze softened for a brief moment, but it was fleeting, quickly replaced by a calculating look. He leaned back, crossing his arms, as if considering something far beyond her words.
“I can give you space,” he said, his voice stripped of warmth, “but you need to figure this out. You can’t keep floating around in this… limbo.”
Quinn bit her lip. Limbo. Was that all she was to him? A fleeting thought, an afterthought at best? The idea that she was nothing more than a distraction to him stung far more than she expected. He wasn’t angry with her, but he wasn’t really with her either. He wasn’t even looking at her like a person anymore. She wasn’t sure if he ever had.
She sat up, suddenly feeling the weight of the room, of the expectations she’d been carrying, all the while trying to make sense of the person she had become. Was this really her life? Was it all just for him, for his needs, his goals, his everything? The question burned in her chest, but she didn’t have the courage to ask it out loud.
“I’ll think about it,” she signed, though the words felt empty as they left her fingertips. She was too tired to fight, too lost to care.
Alexander didn’t answer her. Instead, he reached for his phone, already distracted by whatever else was demanding his attention. A part of Quinn was relieved by the distance, by the lack of confrontation. But another part of her, the part that still hoped for something real, something more, couldn’t shake the feeling that everything between them was fading. It was like watching the last traces of sunlight disappear behind the horizon, knowing that the darkness would soon follow.
As Quinn lay back down on the couch, trying to avoid the crushing weight of her own thoughts, she couldn’t help but wonder: Was this it? Was this all her life would ever amount to? Just another night drifting in a void, between the remnants of something that used to be—and the painful reality that nothing was going to change.
