He walked away before I could respond. Left me sitting in my car with those words echoing in my head until they were all I could hear.
Some things don’t get forgiven. They get survived.
My apartment was dark, bottles everywhere. I’d been sitting on the floor drafting messages to her that I never sent because what was the point? She’d blocked my number anyway. Blocked me on everything. Erased me like I’d never existed.
“Jesus Christ.” Jake flipped on the lights and I flinched. “How long have you been like this?”
“Don’t know. What day is it?”
“Thursday. You’ve missed three board meetings. Your assistant called me asking if you were dead.” He started picking up bottles, his face doing that thing it did when he was worried but trying not to show it. “What happened? You said you had it handled. You said everything was fine.”
“I lied.” I laughed, and the sound came out broken. “I’m good at that. Lying. Destroying things. Being the worst possible version of myself.”
“Archer—”
“Her name is Gianna Pearson.” The words came out slurred but clear enough. “Ten years ago I displaced her family. Signed the authorization that led to her father’s death. Then I fell in love with her without telling her the truth. She found out and now she’s gone and I can’t fix it and I don’t know how to breathe without her.”
Jake sat down slowly on the couch. “The Brooklyn case. That’s her?”
“That was her family. And I destroyed them.” I tilted my head back against the wall. “I’m the monster she’s been fighting against. I’m the reason she became a lawyer. And I let her fall in love with me anyway because I’m selfish and weak and I thought maybe if I just loved her enough it would make up for what I did.”
“It doesn’t work like that.”
“I know.” My voice cracked. “I know it doesn’t. But I can’t let her go, Jake. I can’t stop thinking about her. About us. About that day in the rain when we were stranded and it was perfect. About waking up with her at Mary’s house and thinking maybe I could be the person she thought I was.”
Jake was quiet for a long time. Then he said, “Maybe you need to let her go. Stop torturing yourself and let her heal.”
“If I let her go, I have nothing left.”
“Then you figure out how to have something else.” His voice was gentle but firm. “Because holding on when she doesn’t want you is cruel. To both of you.”
I knew he was right. Knew that clinging to her was selfish when I was the reason she was hurting. That every attempt to reach her was just twisting the knife deeper.
But letting her go felt like dying.
I stopped going to her building after that. Gave her the space Sam said she needed, even though it was destroying me.
My days crawled by in a haze of alcohol and insomnia. The board sent increasingly aggressive emails demanding I return to work or face consequences. I ignored all of them.
Then I called an emergency board meeting.
They filed in looking annoyed and concerned in equal measure. Richard especially looked ready to tear into me—for my absence, for the Brooklyn case falling apart, for everything going wrong under my absent leadership.
I waited until everyone was seated. Then I stood at the head of the table one last time.
“I’m resigning, effective immediately.”
Silence. Then chaos. Everyone was talking at once, demanding explanations, asking what I meant, telling me I couldn’t just resign without proper transition planning.
I waited for them to quiet down.
“I leaked the internal documents to the legal aid clinic working the Brooklyn case.” I said it matter-of-factly, like announcing quarterly results. “I sabotaged our legal strategy deliberately. I created delays and procedural obstacles designed to help the opposition win. And I did it because I finallyunderstood what displacement actually costs. Not in financial terms. In human ones.”
Richard stood up so fast his chair fell over. “You did what?”
“I destroyed our case from the inside. Everything you’ve been wondering about for the past two months—the missing documents, the timeline delays, the compliance issues—that was me. I did that.”
Margaret’s face had gone pale. “Why would you do that?”
