All Chapters of The Day I Stopped Loving Him: Chapter 91 - Chapter 100

Maya's POV I dropped my coffee crossing the street, a clumsy tilt of the wrist that sent it exploding across my boots, and stood there a second staring at the mess like it had personally betrayed me before shaking it off and pushing on toward the fabric supplier. The light had changed since I'd left the loft. Not winter light anymore, apologetic and gone early before you'd properly noticed it had arrived. Something with intention behind it now. Trees along the boulevard had gone thin and green at the tips, new growth still deciding whether it wanted to commit to staying. I had a while yet until the wedding. Not far off, not close either. The right distance, the kind I'd learned to trust from years of making things, close enough to feel real in my chest, far enough that I could still be actively building toward it instead of just waiting. The dress was nearly finished. One more fitting, the adjustments that would come from it, then the final stitching, which I planned to do alone, e

Léo's POV My phone rang halfway up the stairwell to the roof, the site manager's name on the screen, and I nearly let it go to voicemail before deciding whatever it was, it was better handled now than after I'd already climbed the last flight. "Marchand." "Sir, we've got a problem with the courtyard permit for the museum event. The parks department's flagging a conflict, some renovation work scheduled the same window." I stopped dead on the landing. "The wedding's booked for that courtyard. Confirmed months ago." "I know, sir. Someone on their end double-booked. They're offering an alternative date, but it's not close to the one you've got." I pressed my palm flat against the cold stone wall, breathing through the first hot flare of frustration before it could turn into something I'd regret saying out loud. "Get me the contact at the parks department. Today. Not tomorrow." "Already tried. Office is closed till—" "Then find someone whose office isn't closed." I hung up before

Maya's POV I knocked over the mug of pins reaching for my phone, and swore, dropping to my knees to gather them before Barnaby could get to one. "Don't move," I told him, scanning the floor. He ignored me entirely and flopped down two feet away, unbothered by the crisis. Léo looked up from the coffee he was making. "Everything alright?" "Fine. Just don't step there." I found the last pin wedged in a floorboard gap and stood, brushing off my knees, the sketchbooks still stacked on the table where I'd left them the night before, three of them now, filled with rough shapes that were slowly becoming something real. I set them in front of him without ceremony, sliding them across the table the way you'd hand someone something you'd been carrying too long alone. He didn't say anything at first, just opened the first one and started turning pages slowly, his coffee forgotten and going cold at his elbow. I'd learned not to fill that silence. He looked at things the way he looked at every

Maya's POV I woke without knowing why, staring at the dark ceiling, my body fully alert in a way that had nothing to do with fear. I lay still a while, checking. Not anxiety. I knew the shape of that too well by now to mistake it for something else, the tightness in the chest, the racing thoughts circling the same worry over and over. This was different. Just alertness, the particular clarity that comes when the world's gone quiet enough to actually hear your own thoughts without interruption. The loft sat dark and warm around me. Down the hall, Chloe made her small, even sounds, the particular rhythm of a child fully asleep. Outside, the city was doing its minimum, an occasional car passing, some distant noise I couldn't place and didn't try to. I thought about Daniel. Not with longing, that particular ache had long since processed itself into something else, neither grief nor anger, just the plain knowledge of what had happened and what it had cost and what had eventually been bu

Daniel's POV I sat in the waiting room longer than I needed to before the receptionist called my name, flipping through a magazine I wasn't reading, my knee bouncing in a way I hadn't done since I was young enough for it to be excusable. I'd been to therapy once before, briefly, years back, when the pressure of the early career had built to a point where my flatmate at the time had told me, with the particular bluntness of someone watching from close range, that I was becoming someone he didn't recognize anymore. I'd gone to six sessions and stopped, convinced enough progress had been made to call the matter closed. I understood now that the work hadn't been done. It had simply been interrupted, set down somewhere I'd never bothered picking it back up. The therapist this time was a woman with an office near the river, a view of the water behind her desk, and the particular unhurried manner of someone who'd heard a great many difficult things and hadn't been broken by any of them.