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Chapter 038
publish date:
2026-06-17 19:34:03
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Her Rebirth, His Regret Chapter 040
MAEVE The hospital antiseptic wrapped around me the moment I walked through the sliding doors and I followed the signs to the cardiac ward with my bag sliding off my shoulder and my coat still half buttoned from leaving Jane's apartment faster than I had planned.I almost missed him.Alexander was near the reception desk with his back half turned, one hand flat on the counter, his head down. Suit jacket slightly rumpled, tie gone. He looked up when he heard my footsteps and the moment his eyes found mine my chest did the thing I had been hoping it wouldn't."You're here." Like he hadn't fully believed I would come. His blue eyes held mine and I felt the pull of them immediately and against my will and I looked at his face properly for the first time in a while and noticed every single thing I didn't want to notice. The exhaustion sitting around his eyes. His jaw set just slightly too hard. His lips pressed into that thin line of his. I hated how unfairly his face still did what it di
Her Rebirth, His Regret Chapter 039
MAEVE The call with the competition coordinator lasted forty five minutes and by the end of it my hand was cramping from writing notes and Jane was sitting across from me at the kitchen table mouthing questions at me that I kept waving away.Two boutique houses wanted to commission work. One was based in the city, small and selective and the kind of place whose pieces ended up on the right people without the label needing to advertise itself. The other was in Paris.Paris.I wrote it down on my notepad and looked at it and felt something shift in my chest that I wasn't ready to fully examine yet.The coordinator, a woman named Clara who spoke at the efficient pace of someone with seventeen things to do after this call, told me that both houses had reached out within twenty four hours of the announcement and that this was, in her experience, unusual. "People move fast when they find something real," she said. "I'd recommend moving faster."We agreed on a timeline for introductory call
Her Rebirth, His Regret Chapter 038
ALEXANDER Liam put the article on my desk at eleven in the morning without saying anything.He just walked in, set it down in front of me, and stood there with his hands in his pockets waiting for me to look at it.I looked at it.The headline was clean and direct. National Excellence in Jewelry Design Competition Winner Announced. Beneath it, a photograph of the phoenix brooch in its display case, the rose gold catching the gallery lighting in a way that made the graduated garnets look like they were actually on fire. And beneath that, a name.Maeve Quinlan.I read the article. Read it the whole way through, which took longer than it should have because I kept stopping and going back to the beginning of paragraphs. The piece had been described as technically masterful, conceptually striking, the unanimous choice of the judging panel. There was a quote from one of the judges about the articulated settings and another one about the specificity of the emotional vision behind the design
Her Rebirth, His Regret Chapter 037
MAEVE Patricia called me into her office the morning after the gallery event and looked at me across her desk with an expression I couldn't immediately read. "Sit down," she said. I sat. She laced her fingers together on the desk and looked at me for a moment and I held my breath. Was she about to fire me? "I watched the coverage from last night," she said. "The gallery event. Your piece." She paused. "Maeve, I've been in this city for thirty years. I know talent when I see it and I know when someone is wasting it." She held my gaze. "You're wasting it managing my restaurant." I opened my mouth. "I'm not firing you," she said quickly, one hand coming up. "Lord knows I need you here and Marcus isn't back for another few weeks. But I want to say something to you that I mean sincerely." She leaned forward. "Whatever happened that made you end up answering my job listing instead of building your own label, you need to fix it. Because what I saw in that display case last night does
Her Rebirth, His Regret Chapter 036
MAEVE The email came on a Tuesday morning while I was in Patricia's office going through the lunch reservation list and trying to figure out how we were going to seat a party of twelve that had booked for one fifteen when we already had three tables of eight confirmed for the same slot.My phone buzzed on the desk beside me and I glanced at it out of habit and then looked back at the reservation system and then looked back at my phone.Competition organizers. In person interview requested. Questions regarding the Phoenix brooch submission ahead of the final announcement.I read it once. Read it again. Set my phone face down and stared at the reservation screen for a moment without seeing any of it.They wanted to interview me.I picked the phone back up and read it a third time just to make sure I hadn't invented it.I hadn't invented it.I typed back a confirmation with fingers that felt slightly disconnected from my hands, set the phone down, and sat there in Patricia's office with
Her Rebirth, His Regret Chapter 035
MAEVE The Gilded Fork was a five stare hotel and also my last resort. It had floor to ceiling windows, warm amber lighting visible even from the sidewalk, the kind of entrance that had a canopy and a doorman and flower arrangements that got changed every two days because the owner believed wilting flowers communicated a wilting standard. I had looked it up the night before the interview and spent a considerable amount of time convincing myself I was qualified enough to walk through that door.I was. I knew I was. I just needed my nerves to catch up with that information.The woman who met me in the lobby was not what I had expected.Mid fifties, natural silver locs pinned back elegantly, reading glasses pushed up on her forehead like she had forgotten they were there, a deep burgundy wrap dress and the specific energy of someone who had built something from the ground up and knew exactly what it was worth. She looked at me when I walked in and her whole face changed."Maeve Quinlan.
Her Rebirth, His Regret Chapter 030
MAEVE I cried all through the night.For the little girl I had been, growing up believing her real family was out there and everything would finally make sense when she found them. For the love I had poured into people who measured it back out to me in careful portions. For my unborn child. For my
Her Rebirth, His Regret Chapter0 029
MAEVE Alexander, for the first time that I could remember, had his displeasure and anger written all over his face, and he didn't bother to hide it. He looked at me like I was a disappointment, yet...those blue eyes remained trained on mine like he couldn't look away. The tingles in my spine that
Her Rebirth, His Regret Chapter 028
ALEXANDER The song ended and I hadn't danced with anyone.I stood at the edge of the room with a drink I hadn't touched and felt the evening settle into something final and unrecoverable. Grandma Mary had retired to her table and wasn't looking at me anymore. The disappointment I could have handle
Her Rebirth, His Regret Chapter 027
ALEXANDER I had been performing for two hours straight and my face was starting to feel like it belonged to someone else.The right handshakes, the right conversations, the right amount of interest in whatever the man in front of me was saying about the third quarter projections. I was good at thi
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