All Chapters of SHARDS OF US - sculptor turned heiress forbidden love: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

10 Chapters

Chapter One: The Return

RaeThe city hadn’t changed only I had.The skyline still burned gold at sunset, skyscrapers gleaming like ambition made flesh, cars humming like restless hearts below. But as the elevator carried me up the mirrored tower of Collins Group Headquarters, I felt the sharp truth of every step that had led me back. Five years. Five years since I’d sworn never to return.The doors slid open with a soft chime. A dozen faces turned toward me, perfectly rehearsed smiles masking curiosity. The prodigal daughter returns. My heels clicked against marble as I crossed the floor, a sound too confident for the woman wearing it.“Miss Collins,” the receptionist said, voice clipped and reverent. “Welcome home.”Home. The word bit deeper than it should have.My reflection flashed in the glass, tailored white suit, diamond engagement ring, expression serene. Picture perfect. I’d practiced that look in the mirror long before I earned it.“Everyone’s waiting upstairs,” she added. “Your fiancé included.”Of

Last Updated : 2025-10-30

Chapter 2: The Ghost of Us

The boardroom feels colder than she remembers.It isn’t the air conditioning, it’s him.Dane Hayes sits across the glass table, eyes fixed on the digital display in front of him, jaw locked, posture military. The kind of stillness that’s more dangerous than anger. He hasn’t looked at her once since she entered, though the space between them crackles like live wire.Rae’s pulse trips as she takes her seat, careful, measured, professional. Her voice sounds foreign when she greets the team. “Good morning.”The room hums with polite responses, but none from him.She tells herself it doesn’t matter, that this is business, that she’s over him but the truth leaks through every stolen glance. His presence is gravity, the kind that pulls even when you resist.Two years earlierThe world had felt smaller then, just a rooftop and two reckless hearts.She remembers him in soft light, wind teasing his shirt, paint smudges on his hands from his side job restoring murals downtown. They had been bro

Last Updated : 2025-10-30

Chapter 3: Lines in Marble

The key still fits. It shouldn’t, but it does.Rae’s fingers tremble as the old metal door groans open, releasing a breath of stale air, clay dust, and memory. The scent hits her all at once earth and turpentine, faintly sweet, faintly raw. It’s the smell of her life before she became someone’s fiancée, before she started curating herself into perfection.The studio hasn’t changed much. Same cracked windows, same streaks of sunlight pooling over half-finished sculptures and tarps. A moth drifts lazily through the still air. Time forgot this place. And maybe, that’s why she came.She drops her bag on the nearest table, shrugs out of her blazer. Her white blouse creased from the day’s board meetings feels like armor she can finally take off. The silence settles around her like a second skin.Her eyes fall on the far corner. A block of marble, waist-high, untouched for years. She approaches it slowly, fingertips brushing its cool surface. The last thing she’d tried to sculpt here was a

Last Updated : 2025-10-30

Chapter 4: The Meeting

The conference room smells like glass and money, sharp, clean, suffocating.Rae sits straighter than she needs to, spine rigid, eyes on the projector screen. Her hands are clasped in her lap, nails pressed into her palm, the pain grounding her. The hum of the AC fills the silence between voices.Across the table, Dane is speaking.His tone is precise, cool, measured, the same way he used to say her name before it meant something. Now he doesn’t say it at all.“ so, if we integrate the design division under joint supervision, the merger stays balanced,” he says, flipping a slide. His voice carries that steady confidence that once steadied her. “But that means full transparency from both sides.”Full transparency. The irony makes her chest tighten.Rae nods, forcing composure. “Agreed. We’ll provide access to our end-of-quarter files by next week.”He doesn’t look at her. “I’ll expect them sooner.”A pause. The others in the room, assistants, board members, consultants glance between

Last Updated : 2025-10-30

Chapter 5: Heat and Hollow Promises

The apartment smells like lilies, Ethan’s choice, not hers.The flowers sit on the dining table in a perfect white vase, the kind that looks expensive and fragile, like everything else in their home.Rae stares at them while the rain hums against the glass walls, the city outside blurred into streaks of gold and gray. She’s still half in the boardroom. Dane's voice echoing in her head, sharp and steady.“Still sculpting?” “You’ve changed.”Her fingers drum against the counter.“Long day?” Ethan’s voice cuts through the fog. He stands by the kitchen island, shirt sleeves rolled up, a drink in his hand. His smile is easy too easy. The kind that doesn’t reach his eyes anymore.“You could say that,” Rae murmurs.He studies her for a moment, then sets the glass down and walks closer. “You look tense.”“I’m fine.”“You don’t look fine.”She forces a small smile. “You don’t have to fix everything, Ethan.”He chuckles, low and controlled. “It’s called caring, Rae. Some people appreciate th

Last Updated : 2025-10-30

Chapter 6: Collision Course

The ballroom glowed with the kind of light that made everything look effortless. Chandeliers scattered gold across polished marble; champagne shimmered in crystal flutes; conversation rippled like silk. The charity gala was Ethan’s masterpiece, part fundraiser, part social spectacle and Rae, as always, was meant to be the centerpiece.Her reflection caught in the mirrored pillars, hair swept in soft waves, gown a whisper of ivory satin. She looked composed, elegant, perfect. Unreal.“Smile,” Ethan murmured, his hand sliding to the small of her back. His voice was velvet over steel. “You’re the reason half these people showed up.”Rae obeyed. Her smile appeared on cue, graceful and easy, though her stomach felt hollow. She had learned long ago how to perform happiness in public and how to look radiant while slowly unraveling inside.Across the ballroom, a low hum stirred her attention. Laughter, a ripple of movement, then a familiar voice, deeper now, rougher with age. Dane Mercer.H

Last Updated : 2025-11-05

Chapter 7: Sculpting Fire

The studio smelled like earth and rain. Damp clay, faint oil paint, and the ghost of something softer something that reminded Rae of before. Before the fallouts, before the boardrooms and glass ceilings that reflected only the pieces of who she used to be.It was late, long past midnight, and the city outside her windows pulsed with life she couldn’t touch. The only sound inside was the steady scrape of her hands over wet clay. She didn’t know what she was shaping, only that she couldn’t stop.The sculpture had started as something abstract a faceless curve, a fragment of motion but somewhere between exhaustion and ache, it had become the suggestion of a man. Broad shoulders. A tilt of the jaw she knew too well.Her fingers froze.“Damn it,” she whispered, pressing her palms into the clay until it lost its form.A knock cut through the quiet. Once. Then again low, insistent.Rae’s pulse tripped. Nobody ever came here. Not her mother, not the PR vultures who pretended to manage her ima

Last Updated : 2025-11-08

Chapter 8: The Proposal

Rae had attended a hundred events like this, but tonight her skin felt wrong inside her gown, like she was wearing someone else’s life. The ballroom gleamed in gold. Chandeliers threw light like captured fire, scattering it across glassware, sequined dresses, and too many smiles. Cameras flashed in every direction, the hum of wealth and ambition vibrating under the music.She caught Ethan’s hand resting too casually on her lower back. His charm was impeccable the practiced ease of a man who knew the room belonged to him. She smiled when the photographers called their names, smiled again when someone asked about the wedding, and kept smiling even when her heart fluttered like a caged thing.Across the room, Dane stood near the bar, suit sharp, expression colder than the champagne in his glass. He wasn’t supposed to be here tonight, not at their announcement party. Except it wasn’t supposed to be an announcement party. Rae thought it was a corporate celebration, a small merger dinner

Last Updated : 2025-11-10

Chapter 9: Cracks Beneath the Surface

RaeMorning light seeped through the penthouse windows, cruel in its honesty.The diamond on her finger glittered on the coffee table where she’d dropped it the night before, next to a half-empty glass of wine. It looked obscene now, like a trophy for surrender.Ethan was gone before sunrise. A note in his neat handwriting sat on the counter:Meeting downtown. Be perfect tonight at the investor’s dinner. Love, E.She read it twice before crumpling it in her fist.The city below moved fast, indifferent, alive. Inside, everything in her chest felt still, too still. She turned away from the view, from the ring, from the reflection of the woman who didn’t look like her anymore. The studio key in her purse caught her attention, cool against her fingers. Maybe clay would make more sense than people did.But before she could leave, her phone buzzed.Lila’s name flashed.“Tell me you’re okay,” her friend said the second Rae answered.“I’m fine.”“Don’t lie. The internet’s still replaying that

Last Updated : 2025-11-12

Chapter 10: The Kiss

The night air was thick when she stepped out of the car. Somewhere behind her, laughter from the investor dinner echoed. She needed space, air, anything that didn’t smell like performance.Her heels clicked against the cobblestones as she crossed the courtyard toward the studio. She hadn’t planned to come here, hadn’t planned anything, she just found herself tracing muscle memory, needing clay, silence, and her own pulse.When she pushed the door open, the familiar scent hit her: dust, rain, old art, and the faint memory of his cologne still clinging to the corner where he’d once stood.The lights flickered on. The sculpture she’d left unfinished sat on the workbench: fractured, fragile, almost human. Like she was.She pulled her coat tighter. Her engagement ring glinted.Rae set it on the counter beside her tools.She wanted to lose herself in the sound of the wheel, in the rhythm of shaping chaos into form. But the moment her hands touched clay, her control slipped. Tears came withou

Last Updated : 2025-11-17

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