Chapter 3

I still remember the exact moment the harmony shattered. Liam came home late from a "songwriting session," smelling of unfamiliar jasmine perfume and a brand of cigarettes he never smoked. He was drunk, stumbling into our bedroom.

He collapsed onto the bed, pulling me close. "Chloe-love," he mumbled into my hair, his breath hot. "Why'd you cut your hair? I liked it long."

I froze. My hair had always been shoulder-length. Kendra's was long, a cascade of dark waves down to her waist.

He was confusing me with her.

The world tilted. The air left my lungs. So many small things suddenly clicked into place: the late nights, the hushed phone calls, the way his eyes sometimes slid past me, looking for someone else.

He'd mumbled her name in his sleep a few times. "Ken," he'd sighed, a soft, contented sound that had made my blood run cold even then. I'd told myself it was nothing. A dream.

Now, this.

I didn't confront him that night. I couldn't. I lay there, rigid, as he snored beside me, the smell of her perfume a suffocating blanket.

The next morning, I went through his phone. It wasn't locked. He was careless, or arrogant. Or maybe he just didn't think I'd ever look.

There they were. Messages. Photos. Intimate, laughing photos of him and Kendra in a recording studio I didn't recognize. Lyrics to a new song, supposedly for me, with the initial "K" scribbled in the margin, then hastily crossed out and replaced with a "C."

He found me on the living room floor, surrounded by the digital evidence of his betrayal, tears streaming down my face.

He knelt, his face a mask of panic. "Chloe, baby, it's not what it looks like." The oldest lie in the book.

He cried. He begged. He swore it was a mistake, a moment of weakness, that he'd been under pressure with the new album, that Kendra meant nothing. He said he loved me, only me.

Three years of marriage. Five years of my life, a life I'd chosen over my own reality, for him. All for this.

I should have left then. The Dreamweaver was still silent, but I could have walked away. Found my own path in this world.

But I didn't. I was too invested. Too broken. Too... angry. I couldn't just let him off the hook. I couldn't let us go so easily.

So we stayed married. A grotesque parody of a relationship. The music, once our sanctuary, became a battleground. Every lyric, every chord, was loaded with unspoken accusations. The love, already decaying, began to fester. We fought constantly, vicious, draining battles that left us both exhausted and hollow.

He continued to see her, more discreetly at first, then with a carelessness that felt like another slap in the face. Each betrayal was a fresh wound, layered on top of old scars until I was numb.

It was like watching a beautiful, complex symphony devolve into a cacophony of noise, each note a fresh stab of pain. The love songs we wrote became elegies for what we'd lost.

Then, after three years of this slow, agonizing decay, the Dreamweaver stirred. That familiar, soft hum, a lifeline in the wreckage of my life.

"The score has changed, Chloe. The exit portal will reopen. Ten days."

I didn't hesitate. "Dreamweaver," I whispered, tears I thought had dried up long ago streaming down my face. "I made a mistake. I want to go home."