Chapter 9: Florian's Almost-Confession

“I don’t know. He had a folder with your name on it. I just assumed you knew.”

I didn’t answer her right away. I couldn’t. I mumbled something about needing to go, and I walked out of that hospital fast, past the plaque, past the elevator, past three years of my life sitting under someone else’s name, and I didn’t stop moving until I was back in my own apartment with the door locked behind me.

I spent the rest of that day turning it over. A folder with my name on it, in the hands of a man I’d never met, in a building I used to run. I didn’t have an answer by nightfall. I didn’t have one by the time I gave up and went to bed either.

That’s when the knock came.

Florian had never once shown up at my door without calling me first, so I knew before he said a word that something in him had finally broken.

I opened the door and found him swaying slightly, tie loose around his collar, eyes red — not drunk enough to be sloppy. Drunk enough to be honest. Which is worse.

“Florian.” I stepped back to let the hallway light spill onto him properly. “What are you doing here?”

He didn’t ask to come in. He just stood there on my doorstep, working his jaw like the words were stuck somewhere behind his teeth and he couldn’t quite get them loose. I let him stand there. I’ve learned this past week that people confess faster when you don’t rush them, when you just wait and let the silence do the pulling.

“Elena.” His voice cracked on my name, the same way Gerald’s had. “You don’t know what really happened.”

“What happened?”

He pressed the heel of his hand against one eye, like he was trying to push something back in before it spilled out.

“At Aspen.” He said it like the word itself hurt. “I’ve wanted to tell you for so long, I just—”

He stopped.

My whole body went still.

Aspen.

The trip Marcus took eight months before the annulment. The one he came back from was different — quieter, guiltier, though I’d spent months telling myself it was just work stress, just pressure from the board, just Marcus being Marcus under a bad quarter.

Eight months. The same eight months as the standing order. The same eight months I couldn’t stop circling in my head since the florist read that date out loud.

This was it. This was the piece that connected everything.

“Florian.” My voice came out steadier than I felt, which surprised even me. “Tell me.”

He looked at me. Really looked, the way you look at someone right before you say goodbye to something between you that isn’t coming back.

Then he shook his head.

“I can’t.” He was already backing away, one unsteady step toward the stairwell. “Not like this. Not—” He dragged a hand down his face. “I shouldn’t have come here, I shouldn’t have.”

“Florian, wait—”

But he was already gone, footsteps uneven on the stairs, the sound of him getting smaller and smaller until the stairwell door banged shut below.

I stood in my doorway a long time after that not knowing what next, cold air from the hallway pressing against me, holding onto half a sentence and one word — Aspen — that I already knew I wasn’t going to be able to stop chasing.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​