Hatred, I have come to see, is one last way of letting the person who hurt you occupy your life.

It keeps them at the center of your thoughts, it spends your energy on them, it lets them go on shaping who you are long after they have lost the power to shape anything else.

Gaby refused them that.

She did not soften toward Derek, or excuse him, or pretend the wounds were not real.

She simply declined to keep paying him rent in the one place he could still have lived — her own mind.

And in declining, she evicted him completely, far more thoroughly than any court order ever could.