My anger rose like a physical thing—heat and pressure behind my eyes. “This is our territory. I won’t have her living here.”
For a moment Carson looked torn—something like regret flickered over him—then Alice placed his hand on her belly and his resolve melted. “Enough,” he said, voice brimming with impatience. “You’re pregnant too—how can you be so unsympathetic?”
“She pushed you,” I shot back. “I tried to protect her from falling. If you don’t want her here, leave.”
He looked at me as though he expected reason to change my mind, as though my pain should be malleable. Alice’s voice cut through like a blade—gleeful, triumphant. Carson dismissed me as though I were having a tantrum, and his tone told me I was already written off.
That night I took the trash bag—my life packed in black—and walked out into the cold. Alice laughed after me, a perfect, cruel note that followed me down the street. “Don’t fight for him, Brianna. Look what you did!” Carson called after me, “She’ll come back when she sees I’m serious.”
Tears blurred the stars. I threw the bag into a dumpster, symbolic perhaps, or simply a practical disposal. The wind bit at my face and I felt something old die inside me and something new stir—protective, fierce, and absolute. I would not beg. I would not crawl back. Tomorrow morning I would be gone.