The city blurred behind her like a life she no longer recognized.
She didn't tell anyone—not Chloe, not her old manager, not even her parents. She just packed what little she hadn't sold and boarded a train toward the edge of the country. The farther she got from New Illyria, the lighter she felt.
Her destination: her grandmother's old house in the quiet town of Fernhollow.
It wasn't much.
A two-bedroom bungalow with cracked paint and dusty curtains. But it had a garden out back, a creaking gate, and the kind of silence she hadn't known since she was a child.
It was peace.
And peace, Lena decided, was better than love.
The truth was, she had nothing left.
She had sold her condo. Her furniture. Her clothes. Her last brand-name bag went to a reseller two weeks ago. Everything she once owned in the city—all the shine and sparkle—was truly gone.
She used the money to pay off the last of her parents' debts.
When her mother cried on the phone and said, "We'll figure something out, don't worry about us," Lena had smiled and lied: "It's already handled."
She did what she always did.
Carried the weight so no one else had to.
Now, with only two suitcases and a kitchen that needed scrubbing, Lena started over.
She applied for jobs again, but the offers were slow. The entertainment world had forgotten her. Or perhaps they remembered too well—and didn't think she was worth remembering kindly.
So she turned to what she could control.
Online work. Translation gigs. She spoke three languages fluently and picked up occasional contracts from overseas clients. The pay wasn't great—especially with AI translation flooding the market—but it was enough to eat. To survive.
And survival, Lena learned, wasn't as bleak as people made it sound.
She woke with the sunrise and fell asleep to crickets. She cooked simple meals, handwashed her clothes, cleared the garden one weed at a time.
And slowly, her mind quieted.
She stopped checking social media.
She stopped thinking about whether he'd noticed her absence.
She stopped wondering if he'd ever cared.
Because none of it mattered anymore.
A full month passed.
And for the first time in years, Lena could breathe.
Then, one morning, she opened her messaging app.
Dozens of unread messages from Chloe greeted her. All frantic. All emotional. The last one was dated four weeks ago:
Chloe Westwood: "I'm leaving for a month on business. Please don't do anything reckless while I'm gone. I'll be back soon. I'll find you, I swear."
Lena hesitated, then typed: "I'm okay. I'm in Fernhollow. I'm sorry."
The phone rang instantly.
She debated letting it ring. But Chloe was the one person who had never let her fall alone.
So she answered.
"Lena Hart!" Chloe's voice cracked. "You broke your heart and vanished. What kind of best friend does that make me?"
"I didn't want to make you feel worse," Lena whispered. "It wasn't your fault."
"I trusted him," Chloe choked. "I trusted him with you."
"It's okay. Maybe I wasn't really in love… Maybe I was just in love with the idea of being in love."
Silence hung for a moment.
"Do you believe that?" Chloe asked.
Lena stared out the window at the quiet sky.
"…I'm trying to."
They talked until the stars appeared.
By dawn, Chloe had made a decision: she was coming to visit. Lena tried to protest. Chloe ignored her.
A week later, Chloe arrived with a massive suitcase, two bags of groceries, and an unapologetically loud hug.
"You look amazing," Chloe gasped. "How can you look better in old vintage clothes than you ever did in designer?"
Lena laughed, genuinely, for the first time in weeks.
"I think my grandma's closet was secretly a time capsule."
For three days, they lived like teenagers.
Cooking, taking walks, fixing up the garden. They snapped dozens of photos—Chloe uploaded many, tagging Lena with sweet captions and heart emojis.
"I missed this you," Chloe said softly. "You used to laugh like this. Before all the glitter."
Lena looked down at her muddy sneakers and sunburned arms.
"I think I finally found myself again."
Chloe smiled.
"Then maybe it's time the world sees her too."
Three days later, Chloe left—but not without a promise to return.
The weather began to shift, the air turning crisper as autumn approached. Lena wrapped herself in a knitted cardigan, stepped out for her afternoon walk, and breathed in the scent of damp earth and drying leaves.
She hadn't felt this calm in years.
And that's when she heard the hum of a car behind her.
She turned, confused.
The car had already parked, quietly, just a few feet away.
And then the door opened.
Her heart stopped.
Because the man stepping out was Ethan Cross.