No Way to Win Me Back의 모든 챕터: 챕터 321 - 챕터 330

Celeste’s POVThe days started blurring together.Metal filings under my nails, sketches layered over sketches, gemstones scattered across my desk like pieces of my sanity I kept trying to rearrange into something beautiful.The exhibition was less than two weeks away, and every beat of the clock felt like a hand squeezing around my ribs.If I wasn’t moving, I was thinking. If I wasn’t thinking, I was panicking.Work was the only thing quiet enough to drown out everything else.Rachel stayed beside me like a quiet anchor.“You need to breathe,” she said one afternoon, setting a mug of tea beside me with the gentleness of someone placing a candle in front of a storm. “Preferably air. Not anxiety.”I cracked a tired smile. “Breathing is a luxury these days.”“You’re going to burn out,” she warned.“I already have.” I leaned back, rubbing the bridge of my nose. “Now I’m just… recycling the ashes.”She snorted. “Very dramatic. Very you.”But there was worry in her eyes.She wasn’t wrong.T

Celeste’s POVFor most part, I had managed to ignore Nicholas Grant.But I knew it was inevitable.The way the crowd’s noise thinned into a strange, suspended silence warned me something inevitable was approaching.I didn’t turn.I kept my eyes fixed on the display case in front of me, pretending I was examining the emerald necklace inside instead of fighting the urge to run.“Celeste.”His voice.Lower than I imagined. With an echo of something that tugged painfully at my ribs.My shoulders stiffened. I hadn’t said his name aloud since the file arrived.Nicholas Grant. Nathaniel Cole. My father who was a stranger to me.I inhaled slowly and turned toward him.He stood there alone now, a few feet away, as if afraid to come closer.Up close, the resemblance was clearer, the shape of his eyes, the angle of his jaw. Flashes of myself reflected in someone I’d never been allowed to know.It made my stomach twist.“May I speak with you?” he asked quietly.He sounded like a man stepping onto

Celeste’s POVI insisted we arrive separately.I told Nicholas it would be better that way, less like we were presenting a united front, more like what this truly was. An old wound being reopened under a sterile light.So I walked into my mother’s home alone.The air inside felt wrong the moment I stepped in, like it remembered everything we’d once suffered here.Claire was sitting on the sofa, hands clasped in her lap, staring at the door as if bracing for impact. She looked strong, but her eyes were swollen, rimmed red.She had cried before I even arrived.I hated that. I hated him for that.“Mom,” I whispered.She nodded, but her throat bobbed hard once. “Bring him in.”Nicholas stepped inside slowly. His gaze dropped the moment he saw her.“Claire,” he breathed. “Thank you for-”“Don’t thank me,” she cut in, voice thin, trembling. “Just say what you came to say.”He looked gutted. Truly gutted. For a second, I almost believed he’d rehearsed his apology a thousand times and still ha

Celeste’s POVI kept expecting the world to stop spinning after that night at my mother’s house. After the apology. After the truth finally tore itself free and left everything in ruins.But nothing stopped.The sun rose the next morning like it had no idea what my family had become. Emails kept flooding in. Orders kept piling up. Employees kept knocking on my door with samples, invoices, and questions.And I kept pretending I was fine.Ryan pretended too, except his version involved moving a little closer every time I inhaled sharply or blinked too long.He didn’t hover, not exactly. He just… existed in the doorway, in the hall, beside the elevator. Shoulders tense. Eyes sharper than usual. Watching for the moment I stalled or cracked.He never pushed. Not once. But his presence wrapped around me like a safety net I refused to fall into every time something derailing happened in my life.Because I feel like that’s why it was so hard for my mother to ever move one, she had depended too

Vanessa’s POVI was stirring my coffee, no, stabbing it, when Mrs. Collins casually dropped the information that ruined my entire morning.“Nicholas Grant,” she said, adjusting her glasses, “was actually the one whose vote shifted the entire jury in Celeste’s favor. Surprising, isn’t it?”Surprising?I nearly cracked the ceramic mug in my hand.I smiled, the tight, brittle kind that kept me from screaming, and excused myself before Mrs. Collins could notice the way my jaw twitched.Nicholas Grant.The man I had cultivated. The man I’d made sure saw me as the face of discipline, competence, refinement, everything Celeste Sinclair was not.And he voted for her?I walked out of the café on autopilot, heels tapping sharp and angry against the pavement as my mind spun through the last few months.Celeste, Celeste, Celeste.Her name had infested every conversation lately. Her breakaway success. Her exhibition. Her sudden artistic genius. Her “undeniable brilliance.” Her tragic little backsto