I let the words chew through me. I could beg and say the words. Fight to stay. But I’ve done that before. I’ve begged to be kept, knocked on that door for hours until my knuckles bled.
I can’t do it again.
And it feels like pulling a knife out of my own chest.
‘You ever think,’ I say, barely above the creak of the lift, ‘how different it could be if timing didn’t fuck everything?’ She goes still beside me, and I push on a little. ‘If things were…later. Or earlier. Or…’
Nothing from her but breath. One sharp inhale. ‘Finn. No.’
It shuts the thought down, and my chest cracks open. Quietly. Like it always does.
She adjusts her grip, arms crossed tighter now, as if she can hold it all in by force. ‘Try to see it this way: we did it. We didn’t just save your career, we made it shine. You’re going to get the recognition you deserve. You deserve the spotlight. Everything this will give you. You deserve this more than anyone.’ Her breath falters on the final syllable.
I nod because I can’t do anything else. If I open my mouth now, I don’t know what’ll come out. A laugh, a scream.
Two floors down, two hundred feet deeper in the pit.
She’s already done with me. This is her goodbye. Wrapped in a bow, polished and polite.
I watch her hands instead of her face. I remember sucking those fingers into my mouth. I remember her thighs clenching around my hips. I remember us in her kitchen. Theo singing along to that daft advert jingle, making that green frog drink. I remember her laugh.
It felt like something we’d keep. Like we had time.
I thought I was more than a job. That we were more than the plan. But perhaps that was just me, dreaming on her time. I was never a real choice. Just the right problem at the right time. Something to fix. And a good time along the way.
I swallow, but it catches halfway. My chest is too tight to breathe right. Every inhale is shallow and wrong, pulled through a straw. I stare at the mirror above the panel. We’re reflected side by side, close but not touching.
I want to say, Don’t do this. Just ask me. I’ll drop the contract. I’ll torch the deal. I’ll stay. Fuck, I’ll stay forever.
But if she won’t ask, and I can’t offer… Then maybe that’s the answer. Maybe we were never meant to survive the real world. She’s giving me the out. That’s what this is. A clean break wrapped in logic and ambition, so she doesn’t have to admit she’s scared too. Scared I’ll fuck it all up. Scared she’ll choose me and regret it. And she’d probably be right.
Or she thinks I’ve already chosen. The money, the spotlight. As though that’s what matters most. As if I’d leave and forget her the minute I hit French soil.
I don’t blame her entirely. Because that’s what the old me would’ve done. I’m not that Finn anymore, and she should fucking know that.
But if I say it first, if I offer everything and she still tells me to go and sends me away – I won’t survive it. Not again. Not when it’s her.
I already tried, and she didn’t catch it. The pressure in my chest breaks like a hairline crack spidering across glass. My hands drop to my sides, and I stare straight ahead.
I’m not worth keeping.
She straightens, blinking hard as if the light’s too bright. I count the seconds till the ground floor.
Six.
Five.
Four.
I’m not enough.
Three.
I never was.
Two.
I never will be.
