I made it half a block before my legs gave out.
I sat on the curb in broad daylight, surrounded by people rushing past to their important lives, and I fell apart. Crying like something inside me had broken beyond repair, like every dream I’d let myself have had shattered at once.
Because they had.
I’d let myself want him. Let myself imagine a future where I didn’t have to be careful all the time, where someone saw me and chose me and made me feel like I mattered. Where Sunday mornings meant waking up in his arms instead of facing another day alone.
And all of it had been built on the foundation of my father’s death.
A woman stopped and asked if I was okay, if I needed help. I told her I was fine, that I just needed a minute. She looked uncertain but moved on, probably late for something important.
I wasn’t fine. I wouldn’t be fine for a very long time.
But I would survive this. I’d survived worse.
I could survive losing Archie.
Even if right now, sitting on a curb in Manhattan with tears streaming down my face, it felt like losing him might actually break me.
Eventually, I pulled myself together. I stood up on shaking legs, wiped my face, and started walking without any clear destination. Just needing to move, to put distance between myself and that building, between myself and the man I thought I knew.
My phone rang. Sam’s name flashed across the screen.
“Where are you?” he asked when I answered. “You were supposed to meet me an hour ago.”
I’d forgotten completely. We were supposed to review practice problems for finals, supposed to be preparing for exams that suddenly seemed impossibly unimportant.
“I can’t.” My voice came out shaky. “Something came up.”
“Gianna, what’s wrong? You sound?—”
“I can’t talk about it right now.” I stopped walking, leaning against a building because standing suddenly felt like too much. “I just need to be alone for a while.”
“Did something happen with Terrace Guy?”
The nickname made me want to scream. “His name is Archer Devlin. He’s the CEO of Devlin Holdings. He’s the reason my father died.”
There was silence on the other end. Then: “What?”
“I found out last night. He knew who I was this whole time, and he never told me.”
“Jesus Christ, Gianna.”
“I just left his office. I confronted him, he admitted everything, and I told him we’re done and I never want to see him again.” The words came out like I was reading from a script. “And now I’m standing on a street corner trying to remember how to breathe.”
“Where are you? I’m coming to get you.”
“I don’t know. Somewhere in Midtown.” I looked around for a street sign. “Near his building. I can’t remember the address.”
“Send me your location. Stay there. I’m coming.”
He hung up before I could protest. I sent my location with trembling fingers, then slid down the building wall to sit on the sidewalk again.
People walked past; some stared, but most didn’t notice, too absorbed in their own lives to care about one more person falling apart in a city full of broken things.
I sat there until Sam arrived twenty minutes later, slightly out of breath from rushing. He took one look at my face and sat down beside me without a word, just put his arm around my shoulders and let me cry again into his shirt.
“I loved him,” I said when I could finally speak. “I really loved him, Sam.”
