But anywhere is better than here.
I pass a bodega with fogged-up windows. A couple laughs inside over plastic coffee cups. I keep my head down.
I cross the street without looking. A cab honks, brakes screech, but I don’t stop.
I just keep going.
No one stops me.
No one follows.
I disappear into the city like I never existed.
Like we never happened.
And now I have to figure out who I am again—
Without him.
Chapter 57
Panic isn’t power. It’s loss
Asher
The office at Crimson Inc. is sterile and silent.
I sit behind the glass desk, still in last night’s clothes. The city moves beneath me, indifferent and fast, but I haven’t moved since I got here. Not really. I came straight from the penthouse, hoping—no, lying to myself—that I’d find control here. Something predictable. Something not her.
She said she loved me.
And I left.
Not because I didn’t feel it. But because I did.
The second she said those words, I saw every piece of myself I’d tried to keep buried—every soft edge, and every broken part—and I panicked. I pulled away before she could see just how far I’d already fallen. Before I could say it back and make it real. Before I could admit that she isn’t leverage or strategy or a goddamn weakness.
She’s everything.
And I disappeared like she was nothing.
I haven’t called. Haven’t knocked on her door. I’ve been sitting here, waiting for her to show up—like she always does. Like she hasn’t changed. Like I didn’t shatter something sacred between us.
The words she said still echo: “I love you.”
And I saidnothing.
I didn’t even touch her after. Just walked out. Didn’t even make it to the elevator before I hated myself for it. Her voice still echoes in my head—soft, hesitant, and real. 'I love you.' I can still feel the way her fingers curled into my chest, the way her body trembled right before she said it. I should’ve stayed. I should’ve said it back.
So I came here, thinking maybe if I buried myself in work, in strategy, or in something—anything—I could get ahead of it. But there’s nothing to control.
Just this.
This hollow ache in my chest and the sick realization that I don’t know how to fix this.
The door slams open.
Maverick barrels in, soaked and breathing like he ran the whole way here. Fury radiates off him in waves. “You motherfucker.”
