Chapter 15: Five Days

Monday morning, I go back to the city. I take the train instead of the car service. I want to be anonymous. I want to be just another person in the crowd, not someone who's being watched. I go to Ashford Ventures and I take the elevator to the forty-eighth floor and I work at my desk like nothing's changed.

But everything's changed. I can feel it in the way people move around the office. They know something's wrong. They can sense the separation between me and Damien like it's a physical thing.

At 5 PM, I take the elevator to forty-nine.

He's not there. The penthouse is empty in a way that suggests he hasn't been here for days. It's clean and cold and it feels like a tomb, like a space that's been preserved but not lived in.

I walk to his desk. My hands are shaking.

I leave my keycard on his desk. It's a small gesture, but it means everything. It means I'm choosing to leave. It means I'm choosing to step away from the job and the money and the access he's given me. It means I'm stepping back into my own life without him. It means I'm making the choice that he's forced me to make.

I write a letter. I pull out a pen from his desk drawer and I write it by hand so he'll know it's really me, so he'll know this came from my body and my thoughts and not from some distance.

"I need you to let me go," I write. "Not because I don't care about you. Not because what we have isn't real. But because if you actually love me, you need to prove it by giving me the freedom to choose you. You need to prove it by stepping back. You need to prove it by accepting that I might not choose you at all. That I might decide that what you did is unforgivable. That I might decide that love built on surveillance is love built on a lie. If you really love me, the way you say you do, then you'll let me leave. You'll let me go. And you'll wait to see if I come back."

I leave it on his desk and I leave the penthouse without looking back.

The next day, I get an email from HR. I'm being processed for termination. No one tries to stop me. No one reaches out to convince me to stay. The separation is clean and it's fast and it's over.

I wait for him to come find me. I wait for him to show up at my apartment or call my phone or send me a message. I wait for him to fight for me the way that people fight for what matters to them.

Nothing happens.

Days pass. One week passes. Eight days. Nine. I refresh my email constantly. I check my phone like it's going to ring. I tell myself that I'm fine with his silence, that I'm relieved, that this is exactly what I wanted.

I'm lying to myself.

I clean my apartment obsessively. I reorganize my bookshelf twice, alphabetically and then by color, and then back to alphabetically because color was stupid. I cook elaborate meals I don't eat. I watch films I don't follow. I start three separate job applications and abandon each one midway through because every question about career goals feels absurd when I don't know what I want anymore, only what I've lost. The structure of a normal life turns out to be something you only notice when the person who made you want it is gone. I sit with the strange realization that before Damien, I was fine being alone. I was competent and independent and I didn't need anyone. And now I miss him the way you miss a part of yourself that's been removed, which is the worst kind of missing, because it suggests something about the permanence of what he became to me.

By day ten, I'm devastated. He let me go. He actually let me walk away. He gave me what I asked for, which was the freedom to choose, and then he accepted that I'd chosen to leave.

Maybe that means his love wasn't real. Maybe that means he just wanted the conquest and once he'd won, the conquest became boring. Maybe that means I was right all along about him being a villain.

Or maybe it means he actually loves me enough to let me go.

I'm sitting in my apartment on day ten when a notification comes through. An email from an address I don't recognize. The subject line is blank.

I open it.

It's from Damien. The email is short.

"I'm respecting your choice. I'm not coming after you. I'm not trying to convince you. But if you want me, I'll be at the Tribeca penthouse next Friday at 7 PM. No strategy. No plan. Just me. It's your choice whether you show up. I love you either way."

That's it. That's the entire email. No leverage. No manipulation. No strategy.

Just an invitation and an acceptance of whatever I decide.

I read it ten times. I read it a hundred times. And I realize that this is the moment where I find out whether what I feel for him is real or whether it was just a response to his pursuit.

I have five days to decide.