It’s time. Time to move. Time to find her. Time to claim what’s mine, one way or another.
Chapter 24
In the days since my date with Louis, Matt has vanished.
Three streams, three nights of empty chat windows and static silence. The absence isn’t clean, it has teeth. It gnaws at the edges of my concentration until I’m raw. As much as I want to believe he’s just stepped back, I know better than to trust that.
Matthew O’Malley has never done the right thing simply because it was right. It’s quite simply not in his DNA. He doesn’t retreat, he recalibrates. And the man I saw unravelling last Sunday doesn’t strike me as someone who suddenly found self-control.
I try to drown him out with motion—classes, deadlines, and the steady thrum of the sewing machine. My piece for the showcase is coming together stitch by stubborn stitch, but my mind drifts anyway. Back to him. Always to him. Love him or hate him, Matt’s been threaded through my life so long that every loose moment pulls his name into it.
When Madame Adele André takes a sudden leave of absence, I think of him.
When Louis’s texts light up my phone with plans for our next date, I think of him.
When the coffee delivery keeps arriving each morning like clockwork, I know exactly who I’m not supposed to picture.
I snap the thought in half like a brittle thread.Enough. He’s already stolen more of my headspace than I can afford. Critiques stack back-to-back, a pitch blindsides me, and the crystal-studded bodice I’ve been working on fights me like it wants blood. I’m barely keeping air in my lungs, let alone worrying about a man five hours away and whatever has him lurking in the shadows.
The buzz of my phone drags me back. It vibrates against the metal table top, rattling a stack of pins.
A laugh catches me off guard, loosening some of the tension that’s had my shoulders scrunched near my ears all week. A girls’ weekend full of champagne, laughter, maybe a little retail therapy, suddenly it feels like exactly what I need. Something to shake off this fog, this weird headspace that’s been clinging to me like a second skin, a weight I can’t shrug off no matter how many times I tell myself it’s time to let go.
For the first time in days, I let myself exhale, a slow, shaky release that feels like it could carry me somewhere lighter, somewhere free. But it doesn’t last. Not for long.
It’s like trying to hold water in cupped hands—impossible, slippery, and inevitable. The memory of him, of her, slides through me, uninvited, and no matter how hard I try to grasp something else, something real, it slips away. The relief of laughter, of champagne, of my friends’ warmth fractures under the weight of what I can’t forget. Under the weight of questions that refuse to die quietly.
Is he stewing in his anger?
Did I finally hurt him, like he hurt me?
Did my refusal to fold, the way I didn’t chase him when he started pushing, catch him off guard?
And the part that makes my stomach twist, the part I wish I could tear out of myself entirely, is the longing it brings. I don’t miss his hot-headedness, or the version of him that was cold at the end, but I do miss the spark that burned between us, the way he looked at me like I was half salvation and half problem, something impossible to resist, something he had to solve with his hands. That’s the part I can’t let go of.
God, it feels pathetic. And yet it’s alive in me—raw, stubborn, and refusing to be ignored. I shove the thought down, forcing my focus onto the dress in front of me—a knee-length, off-the-shoulder, midnight-blue bodycon number. I adjust the bust line, pin it carefully, and close my eyes, picturing myself in it, imagining the way it would cling, the way it would move with me.
Silver heels clicking over cobblestones, lips glossed, chin held high. Untouchable. Not a girl just surviving. A woman who thrives. Who owns every moment she steps into, no matter thecost.That’swho I want to be, and this weekend I will be her. Even if I have to fake it ‘till I make it.
Hours later, the machine is silent, and the spools empty. My flat is hushed, broken only by the slow tick of the clock and the faint sounds of traffic outside my window. I pack my bag for the weekend with automatic, practiced hands—folding, tucking, and rolling—until my fingers snag on the edge of a gold slip dress. I move it aside and freeze.
A single pregnancy test, long since expired, hiding there like a ghost. It shouldn’t matter. It’s debris from a night I’ve spent almost two years trying to erase, a night that left me pacing until dawn, bargaining with a future I wasn’t ready to face.
I should have thrown it out years ago, hell, I should toss it now and end this self-inflicted torture every time I stumble across it. But my hand trembles as I reach for it. It’s pathetic, how something so small can steal the air from my lungs. A stupid part of me half-expects it to have answers, to explain the nights I wake gasping, convinced something’s missing from me. To explain the hollow ache behind my ribs, sharp and relentless, like a ghost that refuses to leave.
I slam the drawer closed. Too hard. The wood cracks against its frame like a door being barred. Lock it away. Lock itallaway.
It was nothing. A false alarm. A blip. That’s the line I’ve rehearsed a thousand times.
And yet… some nights, I jolt awake, heart hammering, face wet. Some nights the ache returns, bitter and iron-heavy, like grief itself had learned to live inside me. Even when, technically, I haven’t lost a damn thing.
I shake my head and shove the thoughts down again, replacing them with more tangible distractions—the champagne waiting in the fridge, the spa appointments lined up, the citysparkling beyond my window. I smooth the dresses in my suitcase, feeling the silky folds slide beneath my fingers, and imagine the weekend ahead.
Cora and Abbie’s energy will be infectious. Laughter spilling over the rim of a glass, shopping bags trailing behind us like confetti. Late-night talks where we put the world to rights. Maybe, just maybe, I can trick myself into forgetting—if only for a few hours—that the ghost of Matt’s gaze is always lingering somewhere behind my eyes.
I pull the midnight-blue dress from the hanger again, smoothing it over my body as I face the mirror. The woman looking back at me is untouchable, dangerous—if only to herself. Sharp. Polished. Ready for distraction, for indulgence, for chaos.
Because this weekend, I will laugh. I will drink. I will flirt. I will let myself burn, let myself feel, let myself exist outside the shadow he cast over me if it’s the last thing I do.
