"No, you were trying to save me. There's a difference." I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand, leaving streaks of mascara. "I didn't need saving, Garrett. I needed you to trust that I could handle myself."
"I do trust you—"
"Do you?" The question comes out sharper than I intend. "Because from where I'm standing, it looks like you couldn't stand watching me succeed on my own. Like you needed to insert yourself into my victory so you could matter."
He flinches as if struck. "That's not—"
"Isn't it?" I'm circling him now, predator and prey, my bare feet crunching over broken ceramic. "Tell me the truth, Garrett. When you stood up in that room, was it really about showing them how great I am? Or was it about proving to yourself that you matter in my success?"
The silence stretches between us, heavy and damning. I watch him open his mouth to deny it, then close it again. Watch the truth settle over his features, darkening his expression.
"Maybe..." His voice is barely audible. "Maybe I needed them to know. Maybe I needed to matter."
There it is. The confession that destroys everything.
"Thank you," I say quietly, and he looks up with something like hope in his eyes. "Thank you for finally being honest."
The hope dies when he sees my face.
"I can't be with someone who sees me as a project to be rescued," I continue, my voice steady despite the tears streaming down my cheeks. "I can't love someone who needs to diminish me to feel important."
"Sloane, no—"
"Yes." The word is final, absolute. "I've spent my entire life proving I'm not my mother. Proving I won't disappear into someone else's definition of who I should be. And you..." I laugh, but there's no humor in it. "You turned me into exactly what I swore I'd never become."
"We can work through this—"
"No, we can't." I move to the door, holding it open with trembling hands. "Because you don't see the problem. Even now, after everything, you're trying to fix me instead of understanding that you broke something that can't be repaired."
He doesn't move. Just stands there in my destroyed living room, looking utterly gutted.
"Love isn't enough," I whisper, barely able to get the words out. "Not if it comes with the price of making me smaller."
"Sloane, please—"
"Get out."
"I love you."
"Then leave."
He stares at me for a long moment, and I see the exact second he realizes this isn't something he can talk his way out of. Can't charm or explain or hero his way through. This is the end, and there's nothing he can do to stop it.
He walks past me to the door, pausing on the threshold. "For what it's worth," he says without turning around, "you were magnificent in that room. Before I ruined it. You were everything I said you were and more."
The door clicks shut behind him, and I slide the deadbolt home with shaking fingers.
I lean against the wood, listening to his footsteps fade down the hallway, waiting for the relief that should come with his absence. But it doesn't come. There's only silence and the wreckage of my apartment and the crushing weight of what I've just done.
The adrenaline that carried me through the fight finally drains away, leaving me hollow and aching. I slide down the door until I'm sitting on the floor, surrounded by the debris of my old life. Papers lie scattered across the floor. Broken ceramic glinting in the afternoon light. Steve the sloth lying face-down among the ruins, his smile finally gone.
Outside, Minneapolis moves on. Cars drive past. People head home from jobs they still have. The world continues while I sit frozen in this moment of destruction, hollowed out and empty.
I pull my knees to my chest and close my eyes, trying to remember what it felt like this morning when I thought I could have everything. But that woman—the one who believed in love and second chances and the possibility of being truly seen—feels like a stranger now.
She died in a boardroom an hour ago.
And I killed what was left of her on this floor.
