Semua Bab When I Stopped Loving You : Bab 1 - Bab 5

Aria’s car keys were already in the ignition by the time she realized she hadn't turned the engine on.She stared through the rain-streaked windshield at the rows of identical silver sedans in the clinic’s underground garage. Her thumb kept pressing the unlock button on the fob, over and over, even though the doors were already open.Click. Click. Click.She dropped the keys into the passenger seat, reached for her phone, picked it up, put it down, and then picked it up again.Adrian’s name flashed across the screen for the fourth time.She pressed the power button until the screen went dark, tossed the phone into her bag, and finally put the car in reverse.The private elevator announced the penthouse with its usual soft chime.Aria almost laughed. Even the machine sounded richer, steadier, happier than she felt.She stepped into the foyer. Adrian’s handmade leather shoes were still sitting neatly by the door, placed there by a housekeeper who had already gone home for the weekend.S

**CHAPTER FOUR: ARIA**The laptop screen cast a cool, pale blue light across the quiet uptown apartment, illuminating the blinking cursor at the end of a sentence that had taken Aria three hours to get right.There was no sound of ice clinking against heavy crystal tumblers, no scent of expensive sandalwood cologne lingering in the hallway, and no cold, measured footfalls approaching her door. Here, the silence belonged entirely to her.Yet, as her fingers hovered over the keyboard, her mind drifted backward, pulled by the invisible gravity of a past she had spent years trying to survive.She stared past the screen into the shadows of the room, her thoughts slipping away from the fictional characters on the page and sliding back to a night three years ago—back to the damp, concrete utility room backstage at Evelyn’s club, where the air tasted like cheap bleach and absolute despair.Aria’s fingernails dug into the grain of the wooden chair until her skin broke. She stared at her father