I was actually hoping…fucking idiot… hoping the argument would lead to sex.
To connection.
Tosomething.
Anything but this.
My legs give out. I just sink to the floor, right there in the middle of the vast living room, the city lights glittering indifferently outside the massive windows.
I lie flat on my back, staring up at the ridiculously high ceiling, the silence pressing down on me.
It’s just a relationship break,I tell myself.Just a break. She needs space.
She’ll come around.
But the hollow ache in my chest, the silence where Mia’s cries were moments before, tells a different story.
The reality hits me with the force of a terminal impact.
She’s gone.
They’re both gone.
And it’s all my fucking fault.
43
Sabrina
Idid it.
I’m back in Brooklyn.
Operation: Escape the Gilded Cageis officially complete.
Sort of.
My one-bedroom apartment feels both blessedly familiar and ridiculously small after Leo Maxwell’s penthouse sky palace. The air smells like my usual lavender diffuser and faint traces of Mia’s diaper pail, not ozone and hundred-dollar bills.
Not sure if that’s good or bad.
I’m sitting on my slightly-too-small-but-paid-for sofa, laptop precariously balanced on a stack of overdue library books. Taylor Strategic Communications, Global HQ, has officially returned to its humble roots.
Mia is blessedly asleep in her own crib, in her own room.
The break.
That’s what I called it when I walked out of his penthouse two days ago, Mia clutched in my armslike a tiny, surprisingly loud shield. He didn’t try to stop me, not really. Just stood there, looking… wrecked.
Which almost made me hesitate.
Almost.
But then I remembered the wingsuit video, the lie, the casual disregard for the fragile thing we were trying to build.
And I kept walking.
Do I miss him?