Page 59

Because I’m busy making sure you and your pitiful sycophants are going to regret ever taking him from me.

“When I’m hungry, I’ll eat.” I pull on my coat, scooping my hair out of the collar to fall over my shoulders. “Some people pig out just because they can, but I happen to have more discerning taste.” I turn and wave at him. “Enjoy your fuckfest, though.”

Back in the flat,I lock myself in my room and reach for my phone with cold hands. My coat is still on, pearled with raindrops, and I’m breathless from the walk, but I don’t wait. I can’t.

Hot with exertion and shame, restless and uncomfortable as someone trying to sleep with a pebble lodged under their rib, I scramble through my phone, pulling up Evan’s account.

It’s just to confirm, I tell myself, just to see. But the truth is, Ineedto know. I need to see it with my own eyes, need to seethe blonde heiress sitting in his lap, her arms draped over his shoulders, her mouth pressed to his.

Because then, I could finally let go of my hopes and move on. I just need to know the truth—no, to see the truth, to confront it head-on, and then it’ll be okay.

I’llbe okay. I’ll have no other choice but to be.

Shaking like I’ve got a fever, I scroll through colourful sun-splashed images: green vineyards, white sand beaches, a chateau of weathered stone with white shutters and blue slate roofs, decadent meals spread out under paper lanterns.

My finger slows to a stop when I reach a photo of Evan clinking wine glasses with a blonde girl. With her pale shoulder-length hair and periwinkle blue eyes, I recognise her instantly: Theodora Dorokhova, former Spearcrest Head Girl.

I let out a shaky breath of laughter and scroll through the cluster of photos: Theodora and Evan clinking glasses, Evan grinning with his cheeks full of food, Theodora perched on the lap of her boyfriend, Zachary Blackwood, tucking a honeysuckle branch behind one of his ears.

There are more photos: Evan and his massive, monosyllabic Russian friend, Iakov Kavinski, playing video games in a grand living room lit by chandeliers. Séverin Montcroix popping a bottle of champagne. His fiancée, Anaïs Nishihara, standing on the edge of a pool in a violet bikini, throwing a pink heart-shaped floatie at him.

I lock my phone and drop onto my bed face-down.

Pure relief courses through me, but when I breathe out into my blanket, a pathetic little sob breaks out.

I’m weeping before I even know it, crying hard and silent, directly into my blanket. Who knows why. Everything—all of it. Relief that Evan spent his summer with his friends, that the only girls he was with were his friends’ girlfriends. Sad that hedidn’t spend the summer with me, like we’d said, sharing his flat, cooking in his kitchen, making out on his couch, falling asleep with my cheek pressed to his heartbeat.

And tears of anger, too. At Maximilian, for bringing me low enough that I checked Evan’s social media when I’d sworn I wouldn’t. Anger that it was so easy for him to shake me, even now. Anger that he still thinks he’s won, that he’s making me want to rush my process when I know I have to be calm, composed, and methodical.

All things I’m not right now.

Because it’s not just relief and pain and anger I feel.

It’s fear. Fear of how much I want to hurt Max, how much I want to destroy him. Fear of the person I’m becoming, fear that I’m not strong enough or ruthless enough to be this person.

Fear that I’ll never stop wanting Evan. That he already stopped wanting me. That one day, he’ll love someone else the way he loved me.

And that I’ll spend the rest of my life regretting ever letting him go.

29

Brittle Metal

Sophie

The next three monthspass in a disorienting blur. Time distorts, hours spent hunched over my laptop, stacks of books, case files, legal briefs, empty coffee cups piling up around me in unsteady towers.

Weeks collapse into one another, late summer melts into autumn, then autumn into winter, the gold-spun leaves of Harvard Yard replaced by white flurries of snow.

In the flat, people come and go, life passing me by like a missed train. Solana’s friends meet in the living room, laughter floating in through my closed door. Elle’s musician brother stays for a few days in between, strumming his guitar and walking around shirtless, but I barely register his presence.

There’s a Halloween party I sleep through despite the thudding music, knocked out cold after pulling an all-nighter. Both Elle and Solana go home for Thanksgiving, both invite me to come with them, but I stay in the flat, living off toast, coffee, packet ramen and white wine.

By November, my article is no longer just a document on my screen—it’s real, an incisive analysis of the weaponisation of NDAs in corporate misconduct cases.

The article enters peer review, and for the first time in months, I can breathe.

That’s when Elle and Sol stage their intervention.