I move quickly, pack a bag, and walk out.
Rowan calls my name again.
I don’t stop.
I don’t look back.
I’m done.
Chapter 44 - Julian
To me, it has all been real. That’s the cruellest part of it, I think.
That’s the thing that keeps circling back, no matter how I try to outrun it. No matter how many times I replay the last six months, no matter how carefully I examine every decision, every pause, every silence.
It wasn’t a performance.
It wasn’t an obligation.
It wasn’t convenient.
It wasn't a list to check off, from an agreement we both signed.
It was...isreal.
It was the most real and honest my life had ever been, and I wouldn't change a thing.
Not even the moment everything fractured, because sometimes you have to break open to see the truth. And every single second before that moment mattered.
The mornings were always my favourite.
Lucy never woke the way I did. She didn’t snap awake, already braced for impact. She surfaced slowly, like the world allowed her grace instead of demanding readiness. Her lashes wouldflutter first, then her brow would crease faintly, like she was negotiating with the day.
I learned to wait.
The first sip of coffee always changed her. Her shoulders would loosen, breath easing out of her, eyes warming from brown into something deeper, molten, alive. She never noticed me watching. Or maybe she did and pretended not to.
That look, that moment, became something I measured my mornings against.
She’d pad around the penthouse barefoot, hair loose or messily pinned, wrapped in one of my shirts like it belonged to her. Like I belonged to her. She hummed when she was focused. Quiet, off-key, unaware. Sometimes she leaned into me without looking, trusting I’d be there.
And I was, always.
I didn’t realize when the shift happened. Only that one day, I stopped thinking of the penthouse as a place and started thinking of it as where she was.
I lived to watch all the little things that were Lucy.
I learned a lot of things without realizing I was learning them.
The way she tucked her feet under herself on the couch when she was deep in thought.
The way her laugh, unrestrained, real, did something to me I didn’t have language for.
I’ve closed billion-dollar deals with less certainty than I felt about her.
Paris only confirmed it.
I’d been there countless times before.
