Never perform for your enemy.
So instead, still sitting on the bedroom floor, you inhale carefully through your nose.
Then you smile.
Not because anything is funny. Not because you are fine. Because in one brutal moment, the fog has lifted. Love is gone. Confusion is gone. Hope, that soft little traitor, is going too. What remains is something colder and much more useful.
Clarity.
And clarity, you will learn, is the most dangerous thing a hunted woman can possess.
You wait until you hear cabinets open and close, until Carmen starts talking about flowers again in her normal cheerful tone, until the whole kitchen sounds like nothing happened. Then you stand up, smooth your shirt, slip the other shoe on, and walk into the room with the sort of face you now understand has saved women for centuries.
A pleasant one.
Daniel turns when he hears you, smiling instantly. The smile is perfect, practiced by love and repeated so often you once mistook it for sincerity. He is standing by the counter with a coffee mug in his hand, broad-shouldered, dark-haired, still wearing the navy button-down you ironed that morning while thinking about table linens. Carmen stands beside him, pearl earrings and pressed blouse, holding a vendor binder against her ribs like the sainted mother of the groom.
“There she is,” Daniel says. “How do the shoes feel?”
You return the smile so naturally it frightens you.
“A little tight,” you say lightly. “But beautiful.”
Carmen beams. “That’s marriage, sweetheart. A little discomfort for something worth showing off.”
You nearly admire her for that line. It would have been darkly funny if she were not discussing your destruction over imported coffee fifteen seconds earlier.
Daniel crosses to you and kisses your cheek. Your whole body has to concentrate not to recoil. His lips feel the same. That is almost the worst part. Betrayal does not immediately change texture. Monsters can still feel familiar.
“You okay?” he asks. “You look pale.”
