Amara's POV
I was halfway down the hall, my tablet tucked under my arm, when I heard Pauline's voice drift out from the half open door at the far end. Sharp. Angry. Threatening in its sharpness.
"Why cannot I stay here, Trey? In three weeks we will be getting married."
"It is tradition," Trey answered. His voice was low and calm, so perfectly composed that it both reassured and shattered me.
"Tradition?" Pauline mocked, the word heavy with disbelief. "I cannot believe this. You let Amara stay here, but your bride cannot? Is this some kind of joke? I heard rumors about you and her."
Everything inside me froze. It felt like gravity shifted, dragging me down through the polished floor. I did not mean to eavesdrop. I was not this kind of person. But her voice held my name like a taunt thrown into a fire.
And the fire burned straight through me.
My stomach twisted painfully. My fingers dug into the tablet until it groaned under the pressure. My pulse thudded so loudly it drowned out my breath.
"What rumors, Pauline?" Trey asked. There was amusement in his tone, a hint of curiosity, as if she had told him the funniest thing he had heard all day.
"That you had history. That you like her," Pauline pressed, her voice tight with suspicion.
He laughed. His laugh. The one I once thought held warmth.
It cut like broken glass.
"Hey, do you really think I would like someone like her? Come on. Whoever made that absurd rumor will get fired."
Someone like her.
The words echoed. Over and over.
Diminishing. Reducing. Degrading.
I felt them slice straight through me. Heat rushed to my cheeks, burning with humiliation. My lungs tightened as if the air had suddenly become too thick to breathe.
"That is what I thought," Pauline continued, smug now, cruelly triumphant. "But I could not believe it when I caught you staring at her."
Another soft laugh, as if the topic bored him.
"You should stop talking nonsense. She is working with us. It is natural to look at her. I look at the household staff all the time. I assure you of one thing, Pauline. I will never like Amara. If she had a crush on me before, I am sure she has outgrown those feelings."
Every word landed like a punch to places I had tried so hard to protect.
Never like Amara.
Household staff.
Crush.
It felt like he was scraping my heart off the bottom of his shoe.
My feet would not move. My heart trembled wildly inside me like a fragile bird desperate to escape its cage. Shame seeped into my bones. I wanted the walls to swallow me whole. I wanted to disappear.
Mostly, I wanted not to feel.
But feelings were traitors. They clung on long after dignity should have let go.
The tablet slipped in my hands. I barely saved it from crashing to the floor. A thick lump rose in my throat, sharp and painful, ready to break the moment I breathed too deeply.
He was marrying Pauline.
I was the planner.
And that was the beginning and end of every story I had no right to dream.
I forced myself to step back. Slowly. Quietly. Pretending I was not falling apart. Every step away from that door felt like walking barefoot over glass. I repeated the same words in my head. Smile. Breathe. Hold on. But my heart was too loud. It drowned every lie I tried to believe.
My chest ached in a way that felt physical, as if sorrow had claws digging into my ribs. I moved farther down the hall, away from them, away from the truth that burned too bright.
I passed portraits of people who had never known heartbreak like mine. Their painted eyes followed me like witnesses to my humiliation. I hated how small and foolish I felt beneath their golden frames.
I could not go to my room. The walls there would crush me.
So my feet chose for me.
The library.
The one place that still held me together.
The door opened under my trembling hand without a sound, as if it knew I needed it. The familiar scent of leather and old pages wrapped around me, a memory of comfort I no longer deserved. My heart knocked painfully against my ribs.
This room held every version of me I wished I could erase.
The hopeful girl.
The dreaming girl.
The girl who thought she mattered.
My eyes burned, but no tears fell. Not yet. I wanted to cry, but something inside me refused to fully break. Maybe it was pride. Maybe denial. Maybe the last desperate piece of my heart pretending it was not already shattered.
I walked deeper into the library, my fingers brushing the spines of books I once touched while he watched. These shelves remembered everything. The silence here was not empty. It accused me.
There was a time my heart believed in more. Believed that eyes lingering a second too long meant he saw me. Believed that his voice softening when he spoke to me meant I mattered. Believed that a smile from him was worth every foolish dream stitched around his name.
Now his words were carved into me like cruel truths.
Someone like her.
Never like Amara.
I wrapped my arms around myself, trying to keep everything inside. Trying to keep my heart from spilling out in jagged pieces. I crossed to the window and pulled the curtain aside. The gardens outside were soaked in calm perfection. Their beauty mocked me. How could the world look so gentle while my insides were collapsing?
My chest shook painfully. My throat burned. Outside was calm. Inside was chaos.
And then my past came rushing back.
I was fourteen, a rag in my hand, dust on my shoes, dreams far too big for a girl like me. He was twenty four, untouchable, golden, beautiful. And he noticed me.
The memory filled the silence with ghosts. The girl I used to be reached for me, hope still shining in her eyes. I could not hold her. I had destroyed her. Or maybe she destroyed herself by believing in a boy who would one day laugh at the idea of loving someone like her.
Dust motes drifted through shafts of late afternoon light, settling on rows of leather bound books that smelled like paper and secrets. My hands moved automatically. Wiping tables. Stacking returns. Straightening chairs. For months, this was my after school ritual. Clean the library. Organize the shelves. Slip out quietly before anyone noticed.
Trey already wore suits that belonged on magazine covers. He was already working at his father's company. Almost every afternoon, just as the chapel bell faded, the door would open softly and there he was. Jacket off. Tie loosened. Sleeves rolled. He claimed a table near the window with a stack of books or a leather notebook. For an hour, we shared an unspoken arrangement. I cleaned. He read.
Then it changed.
He caught me scribbling notes between shelves and said quietly, "Bring your homework here."
I did. Our ritual grew. I cleaned, then studied. He read at first, then leaned over my papers, sliding a pen toward me, pointing at a line of math, asking if I had tried it another way.
One rainy week he arrived carrying two small parcels wrapped in brown paper. Without a word, he placed the first beside my notebook.
"Open it," he said lightly, not looking at me.
Inside was a fountain pen. Black lacquer. Gold nib. My initials pressed into the barrel as if I were someone who deserved her own name engraved.
"It's nothing," he said, then softer, "Use it for your notes. You write like you mean it."
Then the second parcel. A sketchbook. Thick creamy pages. A tin of pencils tied with black ribbon.
"You're always doodling on scraps," he murmured. "Thought you might want to do it properly."
I could not speak. No one had ever given me something that felt like permission before. Permission to dream. To create. To be more than the maid's daughter wiping tables. My fingers traced the embossed cover, already imagining the lines I would draw.
"And one of these days," he said with a crooked smile, "I want you to draw me."
It was simple. But my foolish heart reacted like he had offered me the moon.
Then the spell broke.
"Trey?"
His father's voice snapped down the corridor. He straightened instantly, buttoning his jacket, his face snapping back into its cool mask. By the time his father entered, he was once again the perfect heir. Posture sharp. Tone crisp. Eyes forward. He nodded a curt goodbye and left without looking back.
I stood frozen in the aisle, cloth in one hand, book in the other, the pen and sketchbook hidden in my bag like contraband. My cheeks burned. My heart pounded with everything left unsaid. Long after they were gone, the scent of cedar lingered, and I hated how my heart insisted those afternoons had meant something to him too.
That night, I returned to the servants' quarters. A narrow bed. A single lamp. I sat cross legged and filled page after page with comic style panels and speech bubbles, trying to capture the way he tilted his head, the way his sleeves always rolled up his forearms.
That sketchbook became my most precious thing. My tether to a world I was never meant to imagine. And the drawing he saw the other day came straight from those pages he gave me.
The memory shattered as I sank into a chair in the present, the tablet slipping onto the polished table with a soft thud. The library still smelled the same, paper and polish, but tonight it felt like a cell.
I pressed my palms to my knees and stared at the books. How foolish could I be? No matter how many times he cut me down, no matter how sharp his words, my heart still reacted every time he was near. A pulse. A tremor. A memory of cedar and sunlight. I wanted to burn it out of me. To erase it. But I did not know how.
I pushed to my feet, needing to escape before the ache became visible.
The door opened.
My breath caught.
Trey stood in the doorway, shadows sliding across his shoulders, his eyes dark and unreadable. For a heartbeat, time folded in on itself. The boy in the library. The man in the hallway. All of it collapsed into that single stare. My face hardened automatically, armoring itself with the memory of his words to Pauline.
I turned to leave. He moved first, stepping into my path.
"Are you leaving?" His voice was calm. Almost gentle.
I nodded once, unable to trust my voice. He did not move. The air between us crackled, pulling at something I did not want to name.
Then defiance sparked.
"I am actually having a date with Adrian," I said coolly, lifting my chin to meet his eyes.
For a fraction of a second, his expression flickered. A tightening of his mouth. A flash of heat in his eyes. Then the mask snapped back into place.
I reached for the door handle. "Excuse me," I murmured, slipping past him before he could stop me. My heart hammered like it had fourteen years ago in this very room.
I wanted to scream. To shatter. To forget him. But more than anything, I wanted him to be wrong.
Because deep down, I had never outgrown those feelings.
And that was the cruelest truth of all.