“We were both manipulated,” I finally said. “We both deserved better than him.”
A fragile, genuine understanding grew between us — something new, built not on blind trust, but on shared scars.
She exhaled. “So… what now?”
I took a deep breath and felt something I hadn’t felt in years: peace.
“Now,” I said, “we move on. On our own terms. And we never let a man like that break us again.”
Alan shattered both of our lives, but he also accidentally did something else — he forced us to see our own strength. To rebuild. To choose ourselves.
For the first time in a long time, I wasn’t just “Alan’s ex” or “the woman he cheated on.”
I was Lily.
A mother. A survivor. And, unexpectedly, a woman who’d found a new kind of sisterhood with the one person she never thought she’d forgive.
