Ariana’s POVThe letter came on a Thursday. A sleek envelope. No sender name. Just a crest embossed into the paper: the Luxe Group logo. Again. It had a scent—faintly perfumed, like money trying to be soft. I didn’t open it right away.I held it, standing in the doorway with the wind pushing against my back like a warning.Luca looked up from the couch when I stepped inside.He saw the envelope and didn’t speak. Didn’t need to. We both knew what it meant. Luxe wasn’t done with me yet. ********When I finally tore it open, the letter was cold and professional.// We are requesting, under advisory counsel, that all defamatory statements against Luxe Group cease immediately. Failure to comply may result in extended litigation, internal audits, and the reconsideration of your separation benefits. Separation benefits. I almost laughed. They were still pretending this was a polite divorce. Still pretending this was business. Not war.I brought the letter to Evelyn the next morning. She rea
Ariana’s POVI didn’t expect the silence after Episode Six to feel so loud. It wasn’t the absence of messages or comments — those came in droves. It was the pause. The breath the world took. As if people were finally realizing this wasn’t just a podcast or a woman venting through grief. This was a woman saying what they had all swallowed for years. And they didn’t know what to do with that kind of honesty.*******By noon, the media was circling again. My name was back in headlines — half celebratory, half dissecting.// “The Wife Who Refused to Be Graceful.”“Ariana Cole’s Fire and the Fragile Masculinity That Feared It.”“Too Emotional or Finally Free?”Evelyn called me while I was chopping apples in the kitchen.“You burned the internet down,” she said.“I didn’t mean to.”“Yes, you did.”She paused. Then added, “Daniel’s lawyers have gone quiet.” That got my attention.“What does that mean?”“They’re regrouping. Maybe waiting for the court to push the date again. Maybe hoping you’
Ariana’s POVThe next morning, I didn’t open my email. I didn’t check social media. I didn’t look at Evelyn’s messages or news alerts or trending hashtags with my name stitched into them. Instead, I stood in the mirror and took a long look at myself. Not the curated version. No makeup, no lighting trick, no caption-ready smile.Just me. Still here. Still whole. Somehow. I had survived worse than silence. I had survived being watched while I broke — and being applauded for how elegant the breaking looked. Now, they could watch me heal.*********The coffee shop down the street was nearly empty. I walked there alone, wrapped in an old coat and soft scarf, the kind Daniel used to complain looked “too lived in.”Good. Let it look lived in. Let it look real. I sat by the window with my laptop, the hum of the city beyond the glass sounding distant. I opened my draft folder. There was a blinking cursor in the center of the screen. It almost looked like it was waiting for permission, but I wa
Ariana’s POVThey postponed the court hearing. Again. It was the third time in six weeks.Evelyn called to tell me while I was cleaning out the top drawer of my old work desk — the one filled with forgotten receipts, highlighters without ink, and old name tags from brand launch events. I wasn’t angry when she told me. Not anymore. I had run out of anger.Now I just felt… suspended. Like a truth waiting on a shelf that no one wanted to open yet.“They’re stalling to exhaust you,” Evelyn said. “It’s psychological.”“Do they think I’ll quit?”She sighed. “No. They’re just hoping you’ll lose momentum.”I stared at a bent photo paper wedged between dusty notebooks. I pulled it out. It was me and Daniel. Three years ago. At the Luxe Group summer gala. I was wearing a silver silk dress. Hair slicked back. Daniel had his hand on the small of my back. We looked beautiful. But I remember that night too clearly.The fake smile on my lips. The way Daniel squeezed my waist every time I drifted too
Ariana’s POVI stared at the microphone for a long time before I hit record. Not because I was nervous. But because I knew, once these words left my mouth, I could never take them back. Not from the public. Not from Daniel. Not from myself. I wasn’t just telling a story anymore. I was breaking the very walls I used to build to survive. And I was doing it with my own voice. I didn’t wear makeup. I didn’t rehearse. I didn’t fix my hair. I sat cross-legged on the floor, barefoot, journal open in my lap. And I spoke.// “This is Episode Five of Still Her. And today… I’m not writing a script.I’m reading something real. My journal. Yes — the one they said proves I’m unstable.The one they called obsessive. These are my words. My heart. My pages.If you’re going to quote me, quote me correctly. If you’re going to judge me, judge me fully. But don’t twist what I wrote in the dark to shame me in the light.” I flipped the page. My hands were steady.“I want to be devoured without being erased
Ariana’s POVThe war hadn’t reached the courtroom yet. But the battlefield was already being built — brick by brick, word by word, behind closed doors and under polished tables. Evelyn arrived at 10:14 a.m. She was wearing all black — not out of fashion, but strategy. Sharp. Unreadable. She dropped a legal file on the kitchen island and said simply:“They’re prepping your journal as evidence.”I froze.“Which part?”She opened the folder. Showed me. I read the first page. Then the second. Then the third. I didn’t blink. Didn’t cry. Didn’t breathe for at least thirty seconds.Because the phrases highlighted weren’t just familiar — they were mine. Ripped from private pages, now sitting beneath bold underlines and comments like:> “Potential signs of erotomania.”“Suggests disconnection from reality.”“Obsession with alternate romantic fantasy.”“Contradictions in self-perception.”“Volatile internal world.”They used words like volatile and obsession, like I was a case study — not a wom