A shrill ping cut him off. He instinctively pulled out his phone. Kiara Gamble' s name flashed across the screen. "Dr. Scott, urgent data point from phase three. Can you review it now?"

His eyes flickered from the phone to me, then back to the glowing screen. The decision was instantaneous, unthinking. "Of course, Kiara. I' ll be right there."

He didn't need to say another word. His priorities were laid bare, stark and unyielding. The urgent data. The brilliant protégé. My decade of devotion, my shattered heart, mattered less than a fleeting pixel.

A cold certainty settled in my chest. He wasn' t cruel, not intentionally. He was simply blind. Blind to anything that didn't fit into his meticulously ordered scientific world. I was a disruption, a data anomaly he couldn't process.

I walked away, the click of my heels echoing in the deserted corridor. Where was I going? The apartment I had sold was already being prepped for its new owners. My temporary dorm room felt like a sterile prison. My bags were sparse. I was untethered, floating. And utterly alone.

There was only one place left to go. A place I had sworn I would never return. Home.

The familiar, stale smell of my parents' house hit me first-dust, cheap detergent, and my father' s ever-present bitterness. My mother, a perpetually shrinking violet, met me at the door. Her eyes, faded versions of my own, held a mixture of concern and thinly veiled alarm.

"Ellie? What are you doing here? Where's Alston?" Her voice was a nervous flutter. She always adored Alston, not for him, but for what his name represented: security, status, a distant glimmer of escape for her ordinary life.

"We broke up, Mom," I said, my voice flat.

Her hand flew to her mouth. "Broke up? But... the wedding? The big house?" Her gaze searched mine, desperately seeking a loophole, a misunderstanding.

My father emerged from the living room, a beer in his hand, his face already a thundercloud. "Broke up? What in God's name did you do, girl? You had a golden ticket! A doctor! A genius! Don't you know how rare that is for someone like us?" His words were slurred, accusing. "Did you finally drive him away with your highbrow nonsense?"

"Dad, please," I started, but he cut me off.

"Please what, Ellie? Please let you ruin everything? You think money grows on trees? That house he was going to buy you... that was our ticket out of here! Our Jamie's future!" He gestured wildly towards my younger brother, Jamie, who lounged on the sofa, scrolling through his phone, a smirk playing on his lips.

Jamie, my 'manipulative leech' of a brother, finally looked up, his eyes bright with malicious glee. "Oh, did the great Dr. Scott finally get tired of your bland personality, Ellie? Thought you had it made, didn't you? Living the high life, while I'm stuck here." He tossed his phone onto the cushion. "I heard his new protégé, that Kiara, she's something else. Real firecracker. Not like you, always so stiff."

He paused, then leaned forward, his voice dripping with venom. "So, the wedding's off, huh? Guess that means my tuition money just evaporated. My business loan? Gone. What about your new fancy job in the desert? Does it pay enough to support us all, since you've clearly decided to cut off the main source?"

My head throbbed. The words, sharper than any scientific critique, sliced through me. They didn't care about my heartbreak, my dignity, or the decade I'd spent trying to earn their elusive approval. They only saw the loss of an investment. I was their ATM, their upward mobility, their escape route. And I had just failed them spectacularly.

"You've cut off your own family, Ellie," my mother whimpered, her hands twisting in her apron. "How can you be so selfish?"

Selfish. The word echoed in the empty chamber of my heart. I looked at the three faces before me: my father's rage, my mother's weak accusation, Jamie's smug resentment. This wasn't home. It was a battlefield where I was perpetually the enemy.

A sudden, sharp pain flared in my arm. I looked down. My father's wild gesture had sent his beer bottle crashing against the wall, a shard of glass had flown and embedded itself just below my elbow. A thin line of blood welled up, a crimson thread against my pale skin.

I didn't flinch. I didn't even acknowledge it. The physical pain was a dull throb compared to the gaping wound in my soul.

Without a word, I turned, grabbed my small duffel bag from the hallway, and headed for the door.

"Where are you going?" my mother cried, a note of genuine panic in her voice now.

"Don't you dare walk out, Ellie!" my father roared, scrambling to his feet. "You come back here this instant!"

Jamie just laughed, a cruel, mocking sound that followed me out into the cold night. "Go on, then! See how far your precious science gets you without us to fall back on!"

I didn't answer. I didn't look back. I just kept walking, the shouts and curses fading behind me. The world outside was dark, vast, and silent. And I had nowhere left to go.

Chapter 3

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