Page 184 of Lady and the Hitman

I stood barefoot in my kitchen, sipping black coffee, wearing one of Ronan’s t-shirts that still smelled faintly like cedar and sin. The sky outside was streaked with pale gray and gold, the kind of filtered light that made everything look a little more honest.

Fall had always been my favorite season. Something about the way the world stripped down to its essentials, shedding all pretense. It made you pay attention. It made you brave.

Back at Penn, fall had felt like the real beginning of the year. Not January. Never January. It was the crack of boots against brick, the smell of crisp leaves andoverpriced lattes, the weight of a fresh syllabus in my backpack. I used to walk the campus like it belonged to me, bundled in my favorite wool coat with a scarf tied just so, pretending not to care who noticed. I’d sit beneath the trees on Locust Walk, highlighters in hand, a paperback cracked open beside me, feeling like the future was spread out in front of me just waiting for me to decide.

I loved the rituals—paper deadlines and late-night debates, flasks tucked into coat pockets before football games, the way the air smelled like possibility and cold ambition. It was the only time of year I felt fully in sync with the world, like I was meant to rise with it.

Even then, I liked the turning.

The shedding.

The becoming.

I thought about how much had changed in just a few weeks—hell, in just a few days.

My life had cracked open. My name had trended. My inbox had exploded.

And yet, standing there with that breeze lifting the hem of my borrowed shirt, I felt … grounded. Like maybe I’d finally stepped into a version of myself that wasn’t contorted to fit.

My phone buzzed on the counter.

The post was ready.

I’d spent the night writing it. Not carefully—not in the way I used to write, all edits and disclaimers—but fiercely. Truthfully. The words had poured out of me like they’d been waiting.

I glanced out the window at the little patch of street below my townhouse, thinking how weird it was that I used to imagine escaping Charleston this time of year. Getting whisked off somewhere new. To an orchard inVermont. A winery in the Hudson Valley. Some fog-drenched lodge in the Rockies with a roaring fire and thick wool blankets and a man who made me forget the rest of the world.

And now? I had the man.

And I still wanted all those places—but not to hide. Not to run.

To live.

And I wanted it here, too.

I wanted Ronan to walk beside me at the Charleston farmers’ market. To steal apple cider donuts from food stalls and drag me to the Halloween parade on King Street. I wanted him in a carved-out pumpkin patch on Johns Island and standing next to me at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, even if he’d grumble about the crowds.

But more than that—I wanted to be seen with him.

Anywhere. Everywhere.

I was done pretending.

Done hiding.

I turned back to the screen and placed my hand on the trackpad.

Then I hit publish.

The button pulsed once under my fingertip, then went still. My breath caught. My heart thudded in that jagged, uneven way it always did right before I did something irreversible.

There it was.

The post was live.

On my brand-new Substack, under my real name. Not my pen name. Not a pseudonym. Just me. Zara Hughes. Woman. Former Professor. Former Columnist. And as of five minutes ago—traitor to the polished image I’d spent years curating.

The title:What I Chose.