But she also knew herself.
Knew how it felt to press at bruises just to prove they were still there.
She reached for the phone and typed the handle in without hesitation: @shitfionasays
The name alone made her stomach flip, a muscle memory of humiliation. She braced herself for the images. For the same carousel of cruelty she’d scrolled through once before—caption after caption putting her down, mocking her.
She braced herself to be the joke again.
But when the account loaded?—
The posts were gone.
For a moment, she thought there was a glitch. That her signal had dropped. The follower count now hovered just under twenty-four thousand.
But below that, where there used to be hundreds of posts—stolen thoughts and private vulnerability—there was just one.
A single post.
She clicked it.
For the past two years, I ran this account without my wife's knowledge or consent...
She blinked, the words blurring and un-blurring again.
It wasn’t defensive. It wasn’t clever.
It wasn’t even particularly well-written.
But it was honest.
He didn’t try to justify it. Didn’t try to soften what he’d done.
He named it.
Cruelty. Betrayal. Performance.
He named her, too. Not as a caricature this time—but as a person. As someone extraordinary.
A sob punched out of her without warning. She covered her mouth like it might keep the sound in.
It didn’t.
Her whole body was trembling—grief, anger, confusion, and something she didn’t want to name.
Something dangerously close to hope.
She read the post again. Then a third time.
An apology could never undo what he had done to her. No matter how much she wished it could be. But it was something.
She locked the screen and pressed the phone flat to her chest, like that might steady her breath.
He’d torn her open in public.
Now he was apologizing in the same way.
But what could he ever do that would be enough?
