A pin could've dropped and echoed.
Ryan's breath caught in his throat. Ray's lips parted in stunned disbelief.
"What are you even saying?" Ray whispered. "You're their mother. You're ours. You don't just disappear."
Esme smiled, a broken kind of smile. The kind that came with knowing goodbye had already begun.
"I was never meant to be a mother," she said. "I was never meant to be anything… other than what they created me for. That's what they said. That's what I believed. And maybe… maybe I still do. I don't even know anymore."
Ray stared at Esme, his brows furrowed in deep confusion and the simmering start of anger.
"What the hell are you even saying?" he asked, his voice low, sharp, laced with irritation. "What does that even mean, Esme?"
He turned his glare toward Esme's parents, his jaw clenched tight.
"Can someone, anyone, explain what the hell is going on here?"
