"So that's it? I either leave Phoenix or I lose you?"
"Go." The word comes out as barely a whisper. "Just go."
I want to argue. I want to fight. I want to grab her by the shoulders and shake her until she understands that this isn't the same, that Phoenix and I are different, that our story doesn't have to end the way hers and Olive's did.
But she's already turned away, her shoulders shaking with silent sobs that she's trying to hide from me. And I realize, with a pain that cuts deeper than anything I've ever felt, that there's nothing I can say. Nothing I can do.
She's made her choice too.
I walk back to my room. I pack my bag slowly, mechanically, folding clothes I don't remember wearing, collecting toiletries I don't remember using. The quilt is still tangled at the foot of the bed, and I take a moment to straighten it, to smooth the fabric with hands that won't stop trembling.
When I'm done, I take one last look around the room. The posters on the walls. The books on the shelf. The window where I used to sit and dream about a life bigger than this house, this city, this small existence.
I have that life now. It's just not the one I imagined.
I pick up my bag and walk out the door. Down the hallway. Past the kitchen where my mother is still standing with her back to me, still refusing to turn around.
"I love you, Mom."
She doesn't answer.
I step outside and close the door behind me. The morning air is cold and sharp, a reminder that Boston is still caught in the grip of late winter while California is already warming towardsummer. I stand on the porch for a moment, breathing in the familiar smells of my old neighborhood, listening to the sounds of a city waking up.
Then I pull out my phone and text Chloe.
I need to see you. Are you free?
Her response comes almost immediately.
Always. Get your ass over here.
I flag down a cab and give the driver Chloe's address. As we pull away from my mother's house, I turn to watch it shrink in the rear window. The white siding. The blue shutters. The garden that my mother tends every spring with such care.
It looks exactly the same as it always has.
But nothing about it feels like home anymore.
Chloe opens the door looking exactly like I remember her. Dark hair piled messily on top of her head, oversized sweater falling off one shoulder, coffee cup permanently attached to her hand. She's thinner than the last time I saw her, the stress of law school carved into the shadows under her eyes, but her smile is the same. Warm, genuine, a little sardonic.
"You look like hell," she says, pulling me into a hug. "Get in here."
Her apartment is small but comfortable, filled with mismatched furniture and towering stacks of law books. A half-eaten bowl of cereal sits on the coffee table next to a laptop covered in sticky notes. The place smells like coffee and old paper and the lavender candles Chloe has been obsessed with since college.
"So." She settles onto the couch and pulls her legs up underneath her. "Let me get this straight. Stalker billionaire,fake girlfriend scheme, cabin kidnapping, and you're still with him?"
I sink into the armchair across from her, suddenly exhausted. "It's complicated."
"Girl, that's not complicated. That's a true crime documentary."
Despite everything, I laugh. It's the first time I've laughed in days, and it feels strange, like a muscle I've forgotten how to use. "I know how it sounds."
"You know how it sounds? Jade, when you told me what happened at that cabin, I was ready to fly out there and murder him myself. And now you're telling me you're going back to him?"
"He saved my life, Chloe. When Marcus was attacking me, Phoenix killed him. Without hesitation. He killed a man to protect me."
Chloe's expression shifts, the sarcasm fading into something more serious. "You told me that. You also told me he put a tracker on your phone and wouldn't let you leave the house."
"I know." I stare at my hands in my lap. "He's not perfect. He's controlling, possessive. Sometimes he scares me."
