FAZER LOGINAuroraI woke before Prescott the next morning, which almost never happened.For a few minutes I lay still beneath his arm, staring at the faint light filtering through the curtains, replaying the reception in pieces. Mia in that red dress the way she had walked toward us like she belonged in his orbit. The small, intimate brush of her fingers against his jacket. The eyes of strangers nearby as they watched the exchange. Prescott had left with me. He had chosen me in the moment that mattered. I knew that.And still my chest felt tight.I carefully slipped out from under his arm and went downstairs. The house was quiet. I made coffee more for something to do with my hands than because I wanted it, then stood at the kitchen counter and tried to convince myself that one public reminder of his past did not cancel everything we had built.It didn’t work as well as I needed it to.Footsteps sounded on the stai
AuroraI should have known the quiet would not last.Prescott had come home the night before from his conversation with Mia and told me it was finished one conversation. A clean ending he had held my face in his hands and said there was nothing left for her to reopen. I had wanted so badly to believe him that I slept with my forehead against his chest and let the reassurance settle deeper than it probably should have.By the next evening, that comfort began to crack.We were at a company-adjacent charity reception Dominic had asked Prescott to attend one of those polished evening events filled with investors, executives, and people who smiled too precisely. I had almost stayed home. Prescott had asked me to come anyway, not as his assistant, but with the quiet insistence of a man who no longer wanted me on the edges of his public life.“Stay near me,” he had said in the car.I did.For the first hour it a
PrescottThe Lowell was quiet when I arrived, exactly as I had intended.Early enough that the dinner crowd had not fully filled the room, private enough that the corner table still gave the illusion of discretion. I took my seat before Mia arrived and ordered water I didn’t touch. My phone sat face-down on the table. Aurora’s expression from earlier that afternoon kept returning whether I wanted it to or not the careful composure, the tension in her shoulders when I told her where I was going, the way she had said *okay* like the word cost her something.I was not here for nostalgia.I was here to end a chapter cleanly.Mia arrived five minutes late, of course. She moved through the room with the same easy confidence she had always possessed, dressed in something dark and fitted that caught the low light as she approached. When she saw me already seated, her mouth curved.“Still punctual,” she said as she sat. “
AuroraFor the first time in days, I woke up without the immediate weight of dread in my chest.Zoe’s messages that morning were light. A funny complaint about her coffee order. A photo of a dress she was considering. A casual hope your morning’s softer than yesterday. It felt so close to the friendship we used to have that I let myself answer without overthinking by maybe Prescott’s warning had been unnecessary, maybe people really could step back from jealousy and choose something kinder.I got ready for work with that small, hopeful thought still lingering.The office, however, had its own atmosphere.Prescott was already in when I arrived, door half-open, phone to his ear. His voice was calm, controlled, the professional tone he used with clients and board members. When he noticed me at my desk, he gave a short nod but didn’t end the call there was a tension in his shoulders I had started recognizing too well.Lena noticed it too.She walked past my desk a few minutes later with
AuroraFor a few days after Mia’s appearance, the house existed in a strange, brittle calm.Prescott was more attentive than usual not smothering, but deliberate. He checked my mood in small ways, touched me more often in passing, pulled me into his room at night with a kind of quiet intensity that felt like both desire and reassurance. Part of me leaned into it Another part still carried the image of him standing frozen in his office while his ex-girlfriend smiled at him like she had never lost the right.I told myself we were steady.I almost believed it.Then Zoe texted.*Zoe:* Hey. I’ve been thinking about our last conversation. I was harsh. Can we talk? No accusations. I just miss my friend.I stared at the message for a long time.Our last meeting in the café had ended coldly, with her anger sitting openly between us and my guilt close behind it. I hadn’t expected her to reach out first a soft, hopeful part of me wan
ZoeJealousy had a way of turning ugly when left alone too long.I sat in the corner of a quiet downtown café, phone face-down on the table, staring at the untouched iced coffee in front of me. Somewhere across the city, Aurora was probably still floating through her little secret life living in Prescott’s house, working under him, warming his bed while the rest of us were expected to smile and pretend we hadn’t noticed. The same Aurora who once warned me about men like him with that careful, superior softness in her voice.*He’s careless, Zoe. He uses people.*And now she was the one in his bed.The betrayal of it sat sharp under my ribs. It wasn’t only that Prescott had lost interest in me the moment she moved into that mansion. It was that *Marcus* wanted her too, two of the most desirable men in their circle, both fixated on the same quiet, plus size girl who used to act like she was above that kind of att







