“Joanna, don’t come looking for me unless it’s a real emergency, because you’re better suited for these things, and I really need to go live my own life.”

The silence in the room turned thick and suffocating, almost impossible to bear.

Jonathan, the man who’d come in with Denise, pulled his arm away and looked at her with a mix of shock and disbelief.

“Did you actually write that to her?” he whispered, his voice cutting through the quiet like a knife.

Denise tried desperately to summon her usual practiced smile, but her face simply wouldn’t obey.

“She was so young—she was just incredibly confused and overwhelmed by everything,” she stammered, scanning the crowd for an ally who wasn’t there.