The wed­ding cer­e­mo­ny has end­ed, but the end­less cycle of pho­tographs and social niceties only inten­si­fies her dis­com­fort. She forces smiles, answers ques­tions, and nods at polite com­ments, all while feel­ing the suf­fo­cat­ing gaze of her moth­er and cousin Beth, who seem to sense that some­thing is wrong. The men­tion of Cal­lum, the man who once promised her a future, sends a sharp pang through her chest, a reminder of how eas­i­ly he dis­ap­peared when she need­ed him most.

Trapped in a role she no longer under­stands, Olivia strug­gles to rec­on­cile the ver­sion of her­self that once existed—the care­free, live­ly girl her fam­i­ly remembers—with the hol­low fig­ure she has become. The dis­con­nect is unbear­able, made worse by the pity in her rel­a­tives’ eyes and the silent judg­ment lurk­ing beneath their con­cern. She wants to scream, to tell them that their ques­tions only deep­en the ache, but instead, she offers a half-heart­ed excuse and slips away from the recep­tion, search­ing for solace in the only place that makes sense—the cliffs.

As she moves toward the rugged coast­line, the sound of the waves crash­ing against the rocks grows loud­er, a con­stant, rhyth­mic force that drowns out the noise in her mind. The salty wind lash­es against her skin, tug­ging at her dress and hair, as if urg­ing her to let go, to sur­ren­der to the ele­ments. For a brief moment, she clos­es her eyes and allows her­self to imag­ine a world where none of this exists—where the weight of her grief, her shame, and her lone­li­ness are washed away with the tide.

Descend­ing toward the beach, Olivia stum­bles on the uneven ground, her palms scrap­ing against jagged stones as she catch­es her­self. The sharp pain bare­ly reg­is­ters, blend­ing with the deep­er, more pro­found agony that she has car­ried for weeks—the secret she can­not share, the deci­sion that changed every­thing. The mem­o­ry of her abor­tion floods her mind, each detail etched into her con­scious­ness, the ster­ile clin­ic, the hushed voic­es, and the over­whelm­ing sense of iso­la­tion as she faced it alone.

Cal­lum had promised to stand by her, but his words had been as fleet­ing as the wind, van­ish­ing when she need­ed them most. The weight of his absence, the crush­ing real­iza­tion that she had been left to car­ry the bur­den alone, has left her feel­ing adrift, dis­con­nect­ed from her own body. The girl she used to be—the one who laughed eas­i­ly, who believed in love, who thought she had a future worth fight­ing for—feels like a dis­tant mem­o­ry, some­one she no longer rec­og­nizes.

At the shore­line, Olivia kneels, her fin­gers trem­bling as she traces the cold, damp sand, seek­ing some­thing, any­thing, to ground her. She reach­es into her pock­et, feel­ing the famil­iar weight of a small blade, her last refuge in a world that feels increas­ing­ly unbear­able. The sharp sting of met­al against her skin is a fleet­ing moment of clar­i­ty, a sen­sa­tion that reminds her she is still here, still capa­ble of feel­ing, even if the pain is self-inflict­ed.

Each shal­low cut becomes a silent plea, an unspo­ken con­fes­sion of the emo­tions she can­not articulate—the grief, the shame, the suf­fo­cat­ing lone­li­ness that lingers despite the peo­ple sur­round­ing her. She watch­es as the blood seeps into the sand, a stark con­trast against the pale earth, a reminder that even pain must find an out­let. The waves inch clos­er, lick­ing at her feet, as though urg­ing her to take anoth­er step, to give in to the pull of the sea and let it swal­low her whole.

The vast­ness of the ocean reflects the empti­ness inside her, an expanse that offers both escape and final­i­ty, an eerie kind of peace that tempts her more than it should. She stands at the water’s edge, caught between the desire to dis­ap­pear and the faint whis­per of some­thing that keeps her teth­ered to the present. In this moment, she is nei­ther ful­ly here nor com­plete­ly gone, lin­ger­ing in the del­i­cate space between giv­ing in to the abyss and search­ing for a rea­son to hold on.