She walked into the wreckage of a wedding that was never meant for her and saw, with painful clarity, the role everyone expected her to play. The woman who would quietly step in. The girl who should be grateful to be chosen, now that she “fit the part.” Instead, Larkin chose herself. She refused to rescue the man who had once traded her in for a thinner body and a shinier image.
Later, when he stood on her doorstep spinning fantasies about second chances, she didn’t argue or seek closure. She simply told the truth: she had always been enough; he had never been worthy of the loyalty he’d been given. Closing the door wasn’t revenge. It was release. In that small, ordinary motion, she buried the lie that her worth depended on being wanted. For the first time, her life wasn’t about being picked. It was about being whole.
