The stage lights were blinding, the kind that made the world look smaller, just me, the microphone, and a sea of faces pretending they still believed in the perfect girl I used to be.
"Ysabelle Cortez!" someone shouted from the crowd.
Cameras flashed like lightning. My smile, rehearsed for years, never wavered.
Until i saw him.
Drake.
Standing by the edge of the stage, too confident, too familiar.
The man who used to whisper promises under the same lights now stood there like he never said them.
"Ysabelle," he said, voice low but sharp enough to pierce through the music. "You don't have to make this dramatic."
I turned to face him, every muscle in my body stiff but calm. "Dramatic?" I repeated, laughing softly, the kind of laugh that sounded like breaking glass. "You used me for career momentum, Drake and now you call this dramatic?"
His smirk twitched. "We both knew what this was. Don't act like you didn't benefit."
The audience couldn't hear us.
The orchestra played on. But the tension between us burned hotter than the lights above.
"I loved you," I said, almost to myself. "And that's my biggest mistake, thinking that someone like you could ever understand what love costs."
He didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
The silence between us was an ending by itself.
So I turned back to the crowd, lifted the microphone, and smiled again, the kind of smile you wear before you fall apart.
Then, suddenly, the lights flickered. My chest tightened.
The sound around me began to fade, the faces melting into a blur of colors and shadows.
I gasped, reaching for something, air, stability, maybe time.
My knees gave way.
And before my body hit the ground, I saw him.
Not Drake.
Not anyone I'd ever known.
Just a man, standing in the middle of the crowd, still, unblinking, his eyes locked on mine as if he'd been waiting for me all his life.
The world tilted.
The music slowed.
Then, everything went black.