The truth didn't feel like a light turning on; it felt like the floor dropping out. Elena spent the night in her car, parked in a far corner of the campus lot where the security lights flickered with a rhythmic, irritating buzz. She watched the sun creep over the horizon, turning the sky a bruised purple, and realized she had no idea who she was anymore. If she wasn't the "doomed daughter" of a broken line, then she was just a woman who had spent two years sabotaging the best thing that ever happened to her for no reason at all.
By 9:00 AM, she was back in her dorm. Chloë was gone to an early lecture, leaving behind the smell of burnt toast and a sticky note on the mirror: Alex called 3 times. He's worried. Don't be a weirdo, call him back.
Elena crumpled the note. Her skin felt too tight for her body. Every memory of the last two years began to play back in her mind, but with a different lens. Every time she had told Alex "I'm just not wired for forever," she now heard it as a lie. Every time she had used her "barren aunts" as a reason to avoid discussing children, she felt a wave of shame so hot it made her dizzy.
The door clicked open. It wasn't Chloë.
"Elena?"
Alex stood in the doorway. He looked like he hadn't slept either. His hair was a mess, and his eyes were frantic. He didn't wait for an invitation; he stepped inside and closed the door behind him.
"I went to your dad's," he said, his voice breathless. "Your mom was still there. She told me, Elena. She told me about the medical records. About the plant."
Elena didn't look at him. She stared at a chipped paint bubble on her desk. "Then you know. There is no curse. Just a bunch of corporate negligence and a grandfather who was too proud to tell his daughters the truth."
"Elena, this is incredible news," Alex said, moving toward her. He reached out to take her shoulders, his face lit with a desperate kind of hope. "Don't you see? All those things you were afraid of..,the ' Thompson fate'..,it's not real. You're free."
She wrenched herself away from his touch, the movement so violent it surprised both of them. "Free? You think I feel free?"
"Why wouldn't you?"
"Because now it's all on me!" she screamed, the sound echoing off the narrow dorm walls. "Before, I had an excuse. When I was cold to you, when I pulled away, when I told you I couldn't promise you a family, I could blame it on the universe. I could say it was in my blood. But now? Now I have to admit that I'm just... this. I'm just a person who's been hurting you for two years because I was too much of a coward to check the attic."
"I don't care about the last two years, Elena," Alex said, his voice dropping to a low, steady plea. "I care about the next fifty. This changes everything. We can get that apartment. We can talk about a family without you looking like you're going to faint. We can actually start."
"No," Elena said, the word cold and final.
Alex flinched as if she'd slapped him. "No? What do you mean, no?"
"I mean I can't look at you right now without seeing everything I've done wrong," she said, her voice trembling with a toxic mix of grief and self-loathing. "You're standing there looking at me like I'm a miracle, but I feel like a fraud. You were right all along, Alex. You were 'perceptive' and 'kind' and 'patient,' and I was just a girl playing a part in a tragedy that didn't exist."
"So you're going to punish me for being right?" Alex's patience finally snapped. He stepped back, his expression hardening into something she had never seen before genuine anger. "I have waited for you to catch up to us for twenty-four months, Elena. I have navigated your 'walls,' I have listened to your theories about your family's doomed DNA, and I have loved you through every single rejection. And now that the obstacle is gone, you're making up a new one?"
"It's not made up! I don't know who I am without that fear, Alex! It was my entire personality!"
"Then find a new one!" he shouted. "Grow up! Everyone has trauma, Elena. Everyone has a reason to be afraid. But most people don't use it as a weapon against the person who loves them."
The silence that followed was jagged. Elena felt the "unraveling" reach its breaking point. She looked at Alex, the man who had seen her at her worst and stayed, and all she felt was the crushing weight of her own inadequacy. She couldn't be the person he wanted her to be. Not yet. Maybe never.
"You should go," she whispered.
"Elena, don't do this. Don't push me away because you're embarrassed that you were wrong."
"I said go!" she yelled, pointing at the door. "I can't breathe with you in here. Every time you look at me, you're expecting me to be 'healed' because of some papers in a trunk. Well, I'm not. I'm more broken now than I was yesterday."
Alex stared at her for a long beat. The hope in his eyes didn't just fade; it died. "You're right," he said quietly. "You aren't the victim of a curse. You're the architect of your own loneliness. And I can't build anything on that foundation."
He didn't slam the door. He closed it with a soft, final click that sounded like a gavel hitting a bench.
Elena sank to the floor, her back against the bedframe. She waited for the relief of being alone, the safety of her fortress. But the walls were gone, and the roof was missing, and the ticking clock had finally stopped.
She wasn't a Thompson with a doomed heart. She was just Elena. And she was completely, utterly alone