The days after her discharge passed in a strange stillness.
Her apartment felt smaller than she remembered, too quiet, too polite. The hum of the refrigerator filled the silences that once held conversation.
Her laptop sat unopened on the desk, the login screen frozen on her company's logo. She had been granted a week of medical recovery leave, and she intended to make every hour of it count, though not in the way HR imagined.
She spent those days rearranging the puzzle of her life.
Replaying every detail of Miles's visits, every lie, every polite smile that had rewritten her past without consent. She was not angry anymore. Anger was too small, too hot, too quick to burn out.
What she felt now was colder. Sharper. Purpose.
The phone rang on the fourth morning, cutting cleanly through her thoughts.
Miles.
For three seconds she only stared at the name. Then she answered, her voice calm and even.
"Hello."
"Willow," he said, relief flooding the word. "You sound better."
"From hello? Am I supposed to thank you for noticing?"
A soft laugh followed, too measured to be natural. "You're still sharp. That's a good sign."
He always talked that way when he wanted something, like a man easing open a locked door.
"You've been on my mind," he continued. "Christy's birthday is tonight. Just a few people on the rooftop. Close friends. Small thing. She asked for you. Said she misses you."
Christy misses me. Of course she did. The kind of missing that came wrapped in perfume and guilt, to be later shelved and forgotten.
"And you?" Willow asked. "Do you miss me too?"
He hesitated, the silence hanging just long enough to curdle.
"I think it would help both of us," he said finally, his voice dipped in something meant to resemble care. "We were friends before all this. And it's obvious you have Zane now. Zane will pick you up."
The words landed with familiar precision. Gentle tone. Cruel subtext. He made it sound like generosity when it was accusation disguised as courtesy. She could almost hear the echo beneath it. You moved on first. You made me the victim.
The line ended shortly after.
Willow stood still with the phone in her hand. Incredulity broke first, then a low, disbelieving laugh. He had actually sounded wounded.
He had rewritten the story, turned betrayal into fragility, as if she were the one who strayed. As if Zane's quiet decency were proof of her guilt. Miles had always been good at this. He tilted truth until gravity bent his way. He fabricated a memory, invented a fact, and spoke it with such calm conviction that it almost sounded like history.
The audacity steadied her.
If he wanted to play the victim, she would play the cure.
Her resolve sharpened. No more reacting. No more defending.
This time she would write the story.
Her tea had gone cold. She set it down and crossed to the bedroom.
The apartment felt too small for her pulse. Every breath sharpened the edges of things, the chair leg, the doorknob, the mirror frame, until the world itself seemed complicit in her humiliation.
If she was going, she would not go as the discarded woman limping through her ex-fiancé's pity party.
She would go as a problem that glittered.
She opened the closet. Rows of muted office clothes stared back at her, white blouses, camel skirts, silk that smelled faintly of boardrooms and fluorescent fatigue. Behind them hung the dress she had never worn. Deep emerald. Low-backed. Silk that clung like water. He had bought it for their engagement dinner, the dinner that never happened.
Her fingers paused on the hanger. Then she pulled it free.
The fabric whispered over her skin as she slipped it on, cool at first, then warm. With each movement it revealed restraint from the front and danger from behind. She fastened the clasp with her good hand and met her reflection without flinching.
Jewelry next. Not the diamond studs he had given her. Those belonged to the lie. She chose long gold earrings instead, bold enough to catch light when she turned her head.
Makeup followed. Foundation erased the pallor of recovery. Blush restored color. The lipstick was crimson, deliberate, not rose. It bled slightly at the corner of her mouth and she corrected it with careful precision. Every detail became armor.
The sling made each movement awkward. She adjusted the strap beneath her hair until it nearly disappeared. Vulnerability hidden in plain sight.
Her phone buzzed.
On my way. Thirty minutes.
She stared at the message until the letters blurred. Thirty minutes. Enough time to breathe. Enough time to detonate.
She walked back to the mirror. The woman staring at her looked composed. Elegant posture. Steady mouth. Beneath the surface, something coiled tight and patient.
She lifted a perfume bottle. Not the soft floral Miles preferred. Something darker. Oud and smoke. She sprayed once at her throat and once at her wrist. The air thickened.
Fragments of memory rose uninvited.
Miles laughing across their first dinner table.
His hand sliding a ring onto her finger.
His voice saying he needed her.
His hand holding Christy's.
Control. She inhaled slowly.
She fastened a thin gold bracelet, the one she had worn the night he proposed. For a moment she considered tearing it off. Instead she left it in place.
Let him see it. Let him remember.
Willow slipped her phone into a small black clutch and allowed a small, practiced smile to settle into place. It did not reach her eyes. That was intentional.
She was no longer the woman in the hospital bed.
She was recovery made visible. Polished. Serene. Loaded.
As she locked the door behind her, she murmured quietly, "Let's see who bleeds first."
Zane did not simply look at her.
He registered the shift.
When she stepped into the fading light, something tightened low in his chest. Not just desire. Recognition. This was Willow, but sharpened. Taller in posture. Wrapped in composure that felt deliberate.
He stepped out of the car without realizing he had moved.
Up close, the effect was worse. The emerald silk followed the lines of her body without apology. The scent of smoke and something distinctly her curled toward him. His gaze dropped instinctively to the cast at her wrist.
"Careful," he said, his voice lower than intended.
His hand hovered before it touched her elbow, giving her space to refuse. When she did not pull away, he steadied her gently. The contact carried heat he forced himself to ignore.
"You should have told me it was still hurting," he said quietly. "I would have come up."
"I'm fine," she replied.
He did not believe her.
"You look unreal, Willow," he said, the honesty slipping through before he filtered it. "I mean that."
He guided her into the seat, adjusting the belt so it would not press against the cast, his movements precise and attentive without becoming possessive. His fingers lingered a fraction longer than necessary before he stepped back, as if committing the warmth of her skin to memory even while telling himself it meant nothing.
When he closed the door and walked around the car, his pulse had not yet settled. The reaction unsettled him more than the dress or the perfume ever could, because it was not simple attraction that tightened his chest. It was awareness threaded through restraint, the recognition of something deliberate in the way she carried herself tonight.
He slid behind the wheel and started the engine, forcing his focus forward, forcing his breathing to steady as the city lights began to gather around them. He drove carefully, hands controlled, posture disciplined, yet her presence remained vivid at the edge of his vision. There was intention in the way she sat, in the stillness of her shoulders, in the precision of her silence. Composed. Measured. Almost strategic.
He did not yet understand what she was walking into, or what she intended to ignite once she arrived. He only knew that whatever waited for her on that rooftop, he would not let her face it alone, even if she never asked him to stand beside her.