I snort, the sound surprising me. “You’re too kind.”
“Darling,” he replies, turning toward me with a grin, “I’m honest. And honestly? This place never deserved you.”
He crosses the room and starts folding clothes with practiced efficiency—the kind that comes from years of backstage dressing rooms and borrowed flats and sleeping out of suitcases. Jamie moves like he belongs wherever he lands. Runways. Studios. Cramped student flats with unreliable plumbing.
I envy that ease.
I sit on the floor with my back against the sofa, knees drawn in, a sketchbook resting in my lap. I should pack it. I know that. But my fingers won’t let go yet.
“I still can’t believe you’re leaving,” he says, quieter now. “One minute you vanish without a word, and the next you’re back just long enough to pack up your life.”
“I didn’t vanish,” I argue half-heartedly. “I just… had something I needed to do back home.”
Jamie pauses for half a second—barely noticeable—but I see it. He doesn’t push. He never does. He just nods, like he understands more than I’m saying and accepts that some truths aren’t meant to be unpacked.
“They missed you,” he continues after a moment. “After the showcase.”
I glance up. “Who did?”
“Everyone.” He shoots me a look over his shoulder. “Professors. Students. Designers who suddenly forgot how phones work and kept showing up to class, asking where Lily Davis was. As if you were some mythical creature who slipped back into the river before they could catch you.”
My throat tightens. “They didn’t need me.”
Jamie laughs—sharp, fond, unwavering. “Oh, darling. You set that room on fire and then disappeared. That only made them want you more.” He shakes his head. “You should’ve seen the disappointment when you didn’t show up for class. People were genuinely affronted.”
He moves to the table and taps a neat stack of envelopes and printed emails I’ve been carefully pretending don’t exist.
“And these,” he adds. “You going to tell me you don’t know what they are?”
I hesitate, my fingers curling around the edge of my sketchbook.
“They’re just… conversations.”
“Mm-hmm.” One eyebrow lifts. “Conversations with buyers and investors. A woman from Milan who wants to talk about consulting. A man from Paris who thinks you’re the future of sustainable couture.” He pauses, lifting one of the letters up forinspection. “And one very persistent investor in London who wants to back your first collection.”
My chest goes light and tight all at once at the seemingly endless possibilities before me.
“I don’t know if I’m ready,” I admit.
Jamie crosses the room and drops down beside me, bumping my shoulder with his. “No one ever is. But you don’t get opportunities like this by accident. You earned them with every stitch, every sleepless night, and every time you stayed when it would’ve been easier to run.”
I swallow past the lump in my throat, eyes fixed on the coffee table.
Then, more quietly, he adds, “You know… I haven’t seen Isabella since the showcase either.”
I freeze, glancing at Jamie out of the corner of my eye only to find him already watching me.
“She disappeared right after,” he continues, head cocked to the side. “No goodbye, nothing on her socials. No dramatic flounce, which feels… unlike her. I thought maybe it was a coincidence, but now I’m not so sure.”
I draw in a careful breath, fingers tightening on the sketchbook.
“It wasn’t a coincidence,” I start, picking at a loose thread in my jeans as I struggle to explain Isabella’s abrupt departure.
“She’s safe,” I continue. “It’s complicated… something bigger than school, bigger than her dreams. And when it was over, she had to leave.”
His brow furrows. “Leave as in…?”
“As in disappear,” I say softly. “The kind where she’s never coming back.”
