Jay staggered a step backward, as if her words had struck his chest with physical force. Pain flared there, his breath catching, and for a moment he had to brace himself just to keep from falling.
He didn't argue. He couldn't.
Because deep in his heart—inside a dark chamber he had kept tightly locked—there was a fear he had always refused to acknowledge, that Liv had never fully lived in this world. That part of her had been left behind in a death he remembered far too clearly, far too vividly.
With a hoarse voice, Jay finally spoke, his tone fractured by confusion and guilt colliding at once.
"How could it be…?"
"How could you say you died in front of my eyes," he said, his voice trembling, "when you were the one who chose to break the bond?"
His eyes fixed on Liv not with anger, but with pain.
"You let it go," he continued, low and strained. "You broke it by force… by sleeping with another man."
Jay shook his head slowly, as if trying to make sense of something impossible.
