Broken Strings

C H A P T E R N I N E

"She smiled softly. But this time it was different.
Her face smiled but her eyes didn't."

- D. A.

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Anisha turned her face to the left so Andrew's lips brushed against her cheek.

She pulled away, instantly and looked up at him. All traces of hope disappearing from his face and instead replaced with rejection. She hadn't let him kiss her.

She bit her lip to hold the tears in, the tears that followed her around everywhere she went. She opened her mouth to say something, to say anything but the words were far beyond her grasp.

Why? That was all she could think about. Why was he trying now?

Her eyes clouded with tears and her lips trembled. Her face filled with misery and desolation. She wouldn't let him kiss her.

She gave him one last look, a look of despair, and rushed to the bathroom.

She needed to get away, from all of it. Everything was consuming her.

It was hard, it was fucking hard. To go around and pretend to be happy? It was a near to impossible task for her.

To stand and see everyone else around her, laughing and dancing the night away. To see people casually sipping wine with smiles on their faces. To see married couples all around her, who were content with one another and in love.

To see everyone else enjoy life while she was miserable and broken. To see everyone else be so fucking happy while she had to stand and watch as life took every single thing away from her.

The hardest part of all the pain was being forced to hold it all together, to act like she wasn't in pain. And that was hard.

Especially now, now that everything was slowly coming to an end. It was fucking hard.

She was slowly seeing everything slip away from her grasp.

Andrew had slipped away from her years ago. She was an utter idiot, a fucking fool to hold on for so long but she did.

Ryan didn't care about his mother, he wasn't concerned with her. But she was his mother, she still cared and she always would, at least until her last breath.

And with Mira? It hurt the most. Anisha wouldn't be there to watch her little girl grow up into a beautiful princess. All those mother-daughter moments would be taken away from her.

It all fucking hurt. How was she supposed to act like she was okay with everything when she knew it was all coming to an end? When she knew her days were numbered and all she could do was watch as everything, every single thing, slipped away from her grasp, forever.

And that was why she couldn't give him hope. He couldn't fight to save her or their marriage anymore.

He was too late, too fucking late. He had fourteen years, fourteen fucking years, to regret everything he had done to her and to try to fix her shattered heart.

And he never tried then. And now? Why now? She wouldn't let him.

She wouldn't give him false hope. It was too late. He was late. Fourteen years too late. He couldn't save her.

Their marriage was long over. It was nothing but a few words on paper. And soon, that paper would be annulled. At some point, those words had meant something to the both of them. The 'I love yous' and 'forevers' had given her all the happiness in the world. But that it was in the past. Today, the marriage certificate meant nothing, it had no value.