Leroy's voice cracked, barely a whisper, as if the words were foreign to him. "I did?" His eyes trembled, wide with disbelief, and his chest throbbed painfully beneath his skin.
He never had thought of her that way. How could he have said such a thing if he hadn't believed it, deep down? His own question seemed to betray him, unraveling the fragile thread of his denial.
His eyes, wide and pale, searched her face, as if trying to recognize a memory he could no longer grasp. The way he looked at her, so empty and so lost, made her feel as though the words had slipped from his lips without a second thought, as if they never held meaning to him at all.
Her chest tightened, a slow, suffocating ache. She had built this conviction brick by brick, rationalized it so thoroughly that it needed no confirmation. It didn't matter if he remembered saying it or not. What mattered was that somewhere, in some moment, he had thought of her as useless.
