The front door clicked shut behind them, somehow louder than every insult that had filled the room before it.
For several seconds, neither Jordan nor I moved.
Outside, a car door slammed.
“That didn’t go the way you expected,” I finally said.
Jordan looked at me calmly, the same steady calm that had carried us through everything.
“No,” he admitted. “But it was the right decision. You did the right thing — like you always do.”
Something inside my chest loosened then.
Not relief. Not triumph.
Just clarity.
The kind that comes when you finally stop pretending something broken can still be fixed.
