For him.
For us.
For the woman he had built this entire world for.
The yacht rocked gently under the moonlight, lifting us toward a future neither of us feared anymore.
And Dane kept watch—over the water, over the stars, over me.
Across the city, Blake sat in the shadows of the bar, phone in hand, fury coursing like fire through his veins. He replayed the images, the videos, the flashes of me laughing, holding Dane’s hand, brushing his cheek in a bookstore, eyes dancing like sunlight on water.
His chest burned. His teeth ground. How could the boy he tormented in school—the one he had humiliated, beaten, erased—be the one holding me, protecting me, loving me?
The messages to Pandora had begun as venting. Now they were claws. Venom. A record of obsession and rage.
"She’s smiling at him. The one I destroyed. The one I crushed. And now he’s the one she should have had. He’s nothing. He’s always been nothing."
His knuckles whitened around the phone. Every laugh, every tiny touch Dane had given me, was a knife twisting in his chest. He imagined us together: my fingers interlaced with his, mylaugh rising above his, my heart beating for someone else. Every image became a bullet in the chamber. Every text to Pandora, a lie he told himself to stay sane.
He was losing her. He had lost her. And it was worse than any humiliation he had endured in school—it was the ultimate truth: she had moved on. She had chosen life, laughter, freedom. Not him. He leaned back, stomach lurching, cold sweat on his skin. The boy from school—Dane—had grown, had fought, had clawed a life from nothing.
And me…I was in it.
Every flash of his success, every protective gesture toward me, every quiet glance I had returned—the world burned around him. And Blake knew, in that dark, venomous pit of despair:
He had thrown away everything that had ever mattered. He had traded me for a maybe, a what-if, and hollow conquests with women who were bright, shiny, empty.
The reality slammed into him. He had failed. And there was no clawing back, no taking it.
Outside, the sun bled its final light into the sea. Inside, Blake spiralled, alone, burning in jealousy, fear, and regret, knowing he had been outplayed by life, by love, by the boy he once crushed.
Two worlds, one woman at the centre, her heart trembling, breaking, and finally beginning to heal.
I woke to emptiness.
Soft, warm, sprawling emptiness that stretched across the massive bed of the yacht like a second body that had only just left. The imprint of Dane was still there, faint but real, the dip in the mattress shaped like him. My hand drifted into it before I was fully awake, fingers brushing the cool sheets as if my body wasn’t ready to accept that he wasn’t beside me anymore.
The room rocked gently with the tide. For a moment I stayed still, letting myself float between the edges of sleep and morning. I felt hazy, full of dreams I wasn’t sure were dreams at all. Last night tangled itself through me in flashes his hands, the quiet sea, the way something inside me had cracked open and filled and breathed again.
When I stretched, my back arched into the thick bedding, my limbs unspooling one at a time. My eyes finally opened.
The smell hit me first.
Coffee.
Dark, rich, warm.
Orange juice.
Crisp bacon.
My stomach growled like a wild animal. I actually laughed.
I pushed myself upright, blinking slowly as my brain caught up to the simple, impossible truth:
I was on a yacht.
His yacht.
