Page 139 of One Last Encore

She had given him everything. Every chance, every ounce of patience, every piece of herself and he had wasted it all. And he had let it slip through his fingers. Not out of malice, but becausehe wasn’t ready. Because he didn’t know how to hold something that precious. Because he didn’t know how to be the man she needed. And she deserved more than waiting. More than hoping he might one day become the man he should have been all along.

His heart clenched as he forced himself to say the only thing that mattered.

"Ingrid, I'm so sorry. Please, just know that," he murmured. It felt like ripping himself open, exposing every raw and ruined part of himself.

But she just stood there. Watching him. Her eyes tracing every line, every scar, as if drinking in the details, pressing them deep into memory, as if this moment might be the last time she saw him. And then a flicker. Not sadness. Not anger. Regret.

“Not as sorry as I am,” she whispered. Then she turned and walked away.

The loss hit Beck like a blow to the ribs, sharp and breath-stealing, hollowing him out. She didn’t hesitate. She didn’t look back. Her steps were steady, but he saw it, in the tight set of her shoulders, the stiffness in her stride, that walking away hurt her too.

But she did it anyway.

Beck stayed frozen, helpless, watching her disappear into the crowd. Every step she took felt like a blade, carving deeper into him, slicing away something essential he didn’t know how to get back.

There were moments that etched themselves into the marrow of a life, impossible to outrun. His grandma’s funeral. The call that his mother was going to jail. Rodney’s voice as he said she was gone.

But this was different.

This wasn’t fate tearing someone away. This was her choice. Her turning her back on everything they had been. Choosing a life where he didn’t exist.

And as she slipped into the crowd, swallowed by the motion and blur of strangers, something in Beck gave way. Like the ground beneath him had shifted, like gravity no longer knew where to pull.

No scream. No goodbye. Just the quiet devastation of a life without her.

She wasn’t stolen from him. She walked away. And with every fading footstep, he knew nothing would ever be the same.

CHAPTER 36

INGRID. MID JANUARY, FIVE YEARS AGO

Since leaving New York, the holidays had drifted past in a blur. Christmas lights flickering on strangers' windows, the countdown to midnight whispered through a screen. It all slipped by like background noise to a life she no longer felt part of. Days bled together, muted and weightless, as if she were living behind glass. Watching. Untouched. Unmoved.

But the airport stayed with her. That moment cleaved through the haze like a blade. The plastic chair biting into her spine. The sterile sting of disinfectant. The murmur of distant voices and flight calls that barely registered. And her thumb, trembling, hovering above the power button. One breath. One press. The screen went black. Silence. She didn’t want to be found.

Her flight to Paris was delayed for hours, but she barely noticed. She sat motionless, staring at nothing. The numbness had seeped into her bones, thick and suffocating. Her mind kept looping through the chaos like her brain was trying to reorderthe pieces, to make sense of something that refused to make sense.

The fall. The crack of the stage beneath her body. The rush of pain. The silence that followed. She had never fallen before. Never in front of an audience. Never during a performance.

Weston’s hands had slipped. Or maybe he had let them. It didn’t matter. Either way, she was the one who hit the floor. The one who had to be carried off the stage while the spotlight kept burning.

But it wasn’t just the fall that left her broken. It was Beck. It was the subway platform. It was the way he had looked at her like she was already gone.

And when she landed in France and finally turned her phone back on, her heart stuttered. No missed calls. No messages. Nothing. Just a blank screen. Silence, loud and cruel.

She told herself she hadn’t expected anything. That she was done hoping. That she had let go the second she walked away. But part of her had still waited. Waited for him to prove her wrong. Waited for him to show up. To say something. Anything. But his silence said everything.

She had been wrong.

She’d believed in them. Believed they had something real, something worth fighting for. But now, she couldn’t find the strength to fight anymore. And clearly, neither could he. He had let her go. Stood there, motionless, like it didn’t destroy him.

What had been the point of chasing her to the station if he was just going to watch her leave?

She couldn’t shake the image of his beautiful, bleary eyes. The way he had looked at her like she was already slipping away. And maybe she was. Maybe she had always been something he reached for but could never quite hold on to.

So she did the only thing she knew how to do. She buried the pain beneath muscle memory. Threw herself into balletlike it was the only thing keeping her alive. Rehearsals, drills, corrections, sweat. There was no time to think. No room to remember.

She stayed late during the intensive, pushing her body until it trembled, until every muscle screamed and her mind finally, mercifully, went quiet. She trained past the point of pain, past the point of thought, until she was too exhausted to feel anything at all.

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