جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 110

The evening air hit me like a slap the second I stepped out of Jeff’s condo.Sharp. Cold. Unforgiving.I kept walking, barely aware of the streets, the familiar cracks in the sidewalks, the faint hum of the city coming alive for the night. I walked because standing still meant feeling everything at once, and right now, that felt unbearable.The photo burned in my mind. Stella's hand in his. Her smile. His.Closure, he had said. But how many versions of closure could one person have before it stopped being closure and started being something else entirely?I found myself at the small park three blocks away without realizing it. I collapsed onto a bench, wrapping my arms around myself, willing the tightness in my chest to ease.It didn’t.Because this wasn’t just about a photograph.It was about the small cracks in the foundation we were trying to rebuild. Tiny fractures that, left ignored, would one day split wide open and swallow us whole.And God, I was so tired of trying to be the o

It had been two days since the photo.Two days since the box. Since the kiss. Since we sat in the middle of his living room floor, surrounded by scraps of his past, and decided—quietly, stubbornly—that we were worth salvaging.And for a little while, it felt like we were okay.Better than okay, even.He made coffee just the way I liked it. I left a playlist on repeat that I knew he secretly loved but pretended to hate. He kissed the side of my neck when he thought I was asleep. I pretended not to notice, because pretending was easier than admitting I still melted when he did that.But under it all, something buzzed.Something unsaid.A wordless ache living in the spaces between our sentences.That’s the thing about relationships—we talk about the fights, the makeup sex, the milestones. But no one talks about maintenance. No one talks about how hard it is to just keep showing up.And maybe we were showing up for each other now.But what if one of us stopped again?The unease really sta

Two days.That’s how long it had been since the cabin.Since Jeff told me what he saw when he pictured five years into the future.Since I let myself say, out loud, that I wanted it too.And it had been… calm.Suspiciously calm.No chaos. No dramatic exes. No cryptic messages. Just me, a half-eaten loaf of banana bread, and a work deadline that kept getting extended because my editor “felt the universe was off this week.”I should’ve known it wouldn’t last.It started with a knock.Three sharp raps at the door. Not a delivery driver, not the soft tap of a neighbor.It was the kind of knock that said: Something’s coming, whether you like it or not.I wiped my hands on a towel and opened the door.She stood there in a trench coat soaked through at the hem, heels mud-spattered, eyes hidden behind thick sunglasses despite the overcast sky.“Are you Demi?”“I—yes?”She pulled off the glasses.And I nearly dropped the towel.“Hi,” she said in a voice I recognized from Jeff’s voicemail once.

It started with a ping from my editor.“Need to talk. URGENT.”Not the kind of message you want to wake up to at 7:04 a.m.Jeff was still asleep beside me, his face relaxed in a way I rarely saw when he was awake. I didn’t want to disturb him, but the pit in my stomach was already forming.I slipped out of bed, padded to the kitchen, and called.“Demi,” my editor said without even saying hello, “Did you see the blog post on Watchdog Weekly?”“No. Why?”“There’s a story trending about a certain journalist who once falsified sources, got named in a hush settlement, and conveniently reinvented herself through dating a famous artist. Sound familiar?”My heart dropped.No names.But too many details to be coincidence.“Jesus,” I muttered. “They can’t prove anything—”“They don’t have to,” she cut in. “The court settlement alone is enough. I know you’ve always been honest with me, and you’ve worked hard to rebuild, but Demi, this is going viral. The trolls are already in our inbox. What do

We installed cameras that afternoon.Jeff insisted on doing it himself, which meant four hours of cursing, tangled cords, and the eventual admittance that yes, maybe we needed to call someone. We settled on a tech-savvy former classmate of mine, Fiona, who didn’t ask questions and accepted paintings as payment.She wired the studio, the hallways, even the alley. She set up motion detectors and secured cloud backups. By the time she left, we had full surveillance coverage—and a lingering feeling of being fortified, not protected.“I hate this,” Jeff muttered as he checked the feed on his phone. “I hate needing this.”“So do I,” I said. “But I hate being watched without watching back more.”I wanted to pretend we were safe. I wanted to pretend this was over. But the truth was, we’d forced Lucas into silence—and men like Lucas only swallowed it so long before they spit fire.Two days later, I found the first smear piece.It wasn’t from Lucas. At least, not directly. The byline belonged t