It had to be Beau.
That sly, treacherous man.
Just from the text he'd sent, Jayna could already smell the scheme—sticky-sweet mischief wrapped in a smug wink. Of course. Of course he'd do something like this. The kind of "help" that wasn't help at all, the kind that shoved you straight into a moment you weren't ready to face.
Her heart pounded with a tight, restless panic.
She should leave.
Right now.
Before Ginevra came back.
Yes—call Tom. Let him pick her up. Escape cleanly, quietly, and pretend none of this ever happened.
Jayna stared at her phone, thumb hovering over the contacts list. The screen was bright, accusing. And at the very top, pinned like a wound that never healed, was the name she couldn't look at for too long.
My GV.
Her throat tightened.
In the end, she didn't call Tom.
Because there was something she owed—something she'd carried like a stone for eleven years.
A simple sentence.
A sentence she'd rehearsed a thousand times and still couldn't say out loud.
I'm sorry.
Sorry she'd vanished. Sorry she hadn't kept the promise. Sorry she'd left someone waiting on a bridge, under the first snow, with a phone that would never ring again.
Even if Ginevra didn't remember the promise—even if she pretended she didn't—Jayna needed to say it to her face.
Not through a message.
Not through a rumor.
Not through time.
Jayna put the phone down.
Then she caught sight of herself in the mirror and burst out laughing—soft, helpless, embarrassed.
For once in her life, she'd slept so deeply that her hair looked like a bird's nest.
God.
She couldn't greet Ginevra like this. Not after eleven years. Not after waking up in her bed like a scandal.
She grabbed a comb and tried to tame the mess. Out of habit, she reached for the glittering bottle of Chaemante hair oil—her own brand, her own luxury staple—
Her hand paused.
Right.
This wasn't her house.
"This is… Giny's," she murmured, the old nickname slipping out without permission. "Giny…"
It had been her private name for her. Her secret way of making the world smaller: My Giny.
Jayna stopped herself from rummaging further. Snooping felt wrong. Ginevra wasn't the kind of person who would scold her outright—but she would notice. And worse, she'd silently file it away: Jayna is careless. Jayna is invasive. Jayna is the kind of person who takes.
Jayna refused to let that be the impression she left.
Instead, she used a warm towel to smooth down the flyaways, then discovered—neatly arranged—an unused cup, a new toothbrush, everything set out like someone had prepared for her without daring to assume she'd stay.
Jayna's expression turned strange as she lifted the blue glass tumbler beside the sink.
She stared at it for a long moment.
Then, very carefully, she put the unopened cup back and used the blue glass.
No need to waste a new one.
Just like before.
After washing her face, she searched for skincare, eyes scanning the tidy lineup on the shelf. And then she frowned.
SG.
And the face on the label.
Mindy Hall.
Jayna's mouth tightened.
"Are you kidding me…?" she muttered, holding up the bottle like it had personally offended her. "My ads cover half the malls in this country and you—of all people—somehow missed them?"
She was sulking, absolutely ridiculous, and she knew it. Still, she poured a little into her palm and patted it onto her cheeks with exaggerated resignation.
"It's… whatever," she grumbled. "Not even that hydrating."
She finished washing up, felt a little more human, then hesitated at the shower.
She'd already showered last night before drinking. She didn't smell like alcohol. But something about being here—about being in Ginevra's space—made her hyperaware of every detail, every possible mistake.
In the end, she took a fast rinse—no soap, just water—then dried off and slipped back into the black sleep dress, moving like she was afraid to disturb the air itself.
Her red dress was hanging on the balcony.
Jayna stared at it for a second, then sighed.
Dry-clean only.
Fine. She would pretend she didn't see it.
She wandered through the apartment slowly, absorbing it in fragments the way you memorize a person's face. Three rooms, a living room, a bath. For one person, it was spacious—too spacious, almost, as if it had been built for someone who once expected another presence and then learned to live without it.
One door was closed.
Jayna stopped in front of it.
She could feel it—something quiet and hidden behind the wood, something that tugged at her curiosity like a thread.
She checked the lock.
It wasn't locked.
Just shut.
Jayna glanced at the clock. If Ginevra was working, she wouldn't come back this early, right?
Her pulse quickened anyway.
"Just a look," she told herself, voice barely a breath.
She pushed the door open.
The room was dark. Curtains drawn tight. Only a thin line of daylight leaked through the edges like a secret.
And then the scent hit her—
Oil paint.
Paper.
That faint, familiar chemical sweetness of pigment and turpentine.
Jayna froze.
Her hand fumbled for the switch, and when the light came on, the room filled with a warm, soft amber glow.
Her breath caught.
Easels.
Canvas.
Multiple boards covered in black cloth like bodies under sheets.
Jayna stood there, stunned, because in her memory—Ginevra could not draw. Not at all. Ginevra had been all logic and restraint, the kind of person who didn't waste time on art.
Jayna remembered laughing at her—teasing her about her old profile picture, that childish doodle of a river with a single pink flower.
The memory made her smile, small and fond.
Then her eyes drifted to the central easel.
A large canvas covered in black cloth.
Beside it lay pencils—clean, organized. A few tubes of paint unopened, as if someone had set them down and never returned.
Jayna picked up a pencil and rolled it between her fingers, feeling the sharpness of the tip.
What do you draw, Ginevra?
What have you been drawing all these years?
Her fingers found the edge of the cloth.
Slowly, she lifted it.
The canvas revealed a woman's face—unfinished.
Only the outline, the shape of the jaw, the shadow beneath the cheekbone.
Brows, dark and precise.
And eyes—
Eyes drawn with such devotion that Jayna felt her chest tighten instantly.
Even without full features, even with the face incomplete, the woman in the painting was undeniably beautiful, because the artist had poured everything into the gaze.
Jayna stared.
Then she noticed it.
A tiny mark near the left eye.
A beauty mark—right at the outer corner.
Jayna's body went cold.
Her hand lifted on instinct, trembling, and her fingertip hovered over the small dark dot on the canvas, as if she was afraid that touching it would erase it.
It wasn't dust.
It was drawn.
Deliberately.
Jayna touched the corner of her own left eye.
Her breath shook.
No.
No, this was too absurd.
Too arrogant.
Too hopeful.
And yet—
She began pulling cloths away, one by one, like someone peeling back layers of a past they weren't ready to see.
The next canvas.
And the next.
And the next.
All the same woman.
Her.
Not one portrait—many.
From youthful softness to a more mature contour. Slight differences in expression. In the set of the mouth. In the angle of the gaze. As if the artist had been trying to imagine her over time, year by year, growing older in absence.
Jayna stood in the middle of the studio, surrounded by versions of herself that she had never seen.
Her knees threatened to give out.
Ginevra didn't know what she looked like now. She couldn't have. She had no reference, no photograph, nothing—
So she'd painted Jayna from memory and longing.
From a face she'd been forced to keep alive in her mind alone.
Jayna covered her mouth.
Her eyes flooded.
Hot tears spilled between her fingers and dropped onto the floor without sound.
She hadn't been forgotten.
Ginevra had been thinking of her, too.
Maybe not in the same wild, burning way Jayna had—
But enough.
Enough that she'd filled an entire room with her absence.
Jayna stepped closer, touching the edge of one canvas, then another, fingertips trembling as if she was reading Braille.
What were you thinking when you made these?
What did you do when the night got too long?
How many times did you sit in this room and try to remember me?
A click sounded behind her.
The lock.
The door.
Someone had come home.
Jayna froze, breath trapped in her chest.
She listened.
Soft steps. Shoes removed. A familiar, careful quiet—like the person moving through the house didn't want to disturb anything, not even dust.
Then Jayna swallowed and walked out of the studio.
Ginevra stood in the entryway, eyes widening as she saw Jayna.
In her hand was a bag of fruit.
Strawberries.
Of course.
Jayna's gaze flicked down, and something in her chest turned tender and sore at the same time.
Ginevra set the bag down as if she didn't know what to do with it now. Her eyes slid toward the dining table—toward the breakfast she'd prepared.
Their eyes met.
For several seconds, neither of them spoke.
A whole eleven years, compressed into a silence that was suddenly too small to hold it.
Jayna's throat tightened.
She didn't know how to begin.
So she didn't.
She stepped forward, reached out, and took Ginevra's hand.
Ginevra's body stiffened at the contact—an old reflex, sharp as a flinch—yet she didn't pull away. Her fingers remained in Jayna's as if her body hadn't yet decided whether this was real.
Jayna tugged gently.
"Come with me," she said softly.
And she led her back into the studio.
Ginevra followed like she was walking into a confession.
Jayna tied her hair up, exposing the pale line of her throat with a deliberate, almost teasing grace, then sat down as if she belonged there.
"I've never been anyone's model," she said, voice light but eyes serious. "Fans have drawn me before. My posture coach says my best feature is my neck."
She angled her face slightly toward the light, poised, calm, breathtaking in a way that made the room feel like it had lost air.
Then she looked at Ginevra.
"Draw me," she said. "The me that's here now."
Ginevra's lips parted. Her eyes darkened with something complicated, something almost painful. For a moment she looked like she might refuse.
But she only nodded.
Once.
She took the pencil Jayna offered, hands steadying as the familiar weight settled into her grip.
And she began.
Ginevra worked in silence, eyes lifting to Jayna again and again, then dropping back to the page—measuring, translating, capturing. Her expression was serious in a way that was almost holy. Every line looked like restraint, like careful devotion.
Jayna watched her, heart swelling so hard it hurt.
The person she'd only been able to imagine for eleven years was drawing her now—without imagination, without distance.
Reality, at last.
Halfway through, Ginevra suddenly stopped.
Her pencil hovered.
Her chest rose as if she'd forgotten how to breathe.
"Done?" Jayna asked, softly.
"Not yet," Ginevra answered. Her voice was low. Controlled. But not fully steady.
Jayna stood and walked over, leaning in to look.
The sketch was beautiful—already. Not a flattering celebrity portrait, not something polished for the public, but something intimate. Something seen.
Jayna's eyes warmed.
"You're so good," she whispered. "Giny."
The nickname slipped out again, softer now, more daring.
Ginevra looked up sharply.
And Jayna smiled.
The same smile as before—warm eyes, faint dimples—like time had folded back on itself.
"I missed you," Ginevra said suddenly, voice breaking through restraint like it had been trapped for years. "Jayna… I missed you so much."
And then she moved.
Before she could rethink it, before she could retreat into politeness, Ginevra stood and pulled Jayna into her arms.
It wasn't a careful hug.
It was a desperate one.
Her forehead pressed into Jayna's shoulder as if she needed proof. As if she needed to anchor herself to something real.
"Just… for a moment," Ginevra whispered, rough and low. "Just a moment. Let me be willful and lean on you like this."
Jayna's nose stung violently.
Her arms came up around Ginevra's back, slow at first—as if she was afraid Ginevra would disappear if she hugged too tightly—then firmer, warmer.
"I missed you too," Jayna said, voice trembling with something tender and ruined. "Giny… you have no idea how much."
Ginevra's breath shuddered against her.
"The bracelet…" Ginevra managed.
Jayna's fingers tightened.
"I never took it off," she said quietly. "It broke a few times. I fixed it. Every time."
Ginevra went still.
Then her shoulders trembled.
The first tear hit Jayna's shoulder like a quiet confession.
Jayna pulled back, just enough to see her face—
Ginevra's cheeks were flushed, her eyes red, her expression caught somewhere between stubborn pride and complete collapse.
Jayna's heart broke.
She grabbed a tissue, gently wiping the tears away as if handling something fragile.
"Hey… hey," she soothed, voice soft and coaxing. "Don't cry. Our Giny is all grown up now—why are you still dropping little golden tears?"
Ginevra tried to blink them back.
Tried.
But the more Jayna comforted her, the harder it got.
And suddenly the tears came faster.
Relentless.
As if eleven years had finally found an exit.
Jayna's hands moved carefully across Ginevra's face, wiping and wiping, whispering the same line like a lullaby—
"Okay, okay… it's alright. I'm here. I'm here…"
And somewhere in the studio—surrounded by hidden paintings, unfinished faces, and a love that had survived time like a scar that refused to fade—Ginevra held onto Jayna as if letting go would mean losing her all over again.