Grace's POV The apartment is too quiet when Grace gets home.
She stands in the doorway and tries to be normal. Tries to take off her coat and put it away. Tries to turn on the lights. Tries to do all the things a normal person does when they come home from an event. But nothing feels normal anymore because the moment she saw Ryan at that gala, everything broke open.
She throws herself on the bed, still dressed, and stares at the ceiling.
His face keeps appearing in her mind. The way he looked at her like she was oxygen. Like she was water and he was dying of thirst. Like five years of time and distance and everything he did to hurt her just disappeared and he was only seeing Grace again.
She tells herself it means nothing. He's married. He's built a life. He probably just felt guilty about the wedding and wanted to apologize so he could feel better about himself. That's all this is. Just someone trying to clean up their conscience.
But then she remembers his voice when he said her name at the gala. It sounded like a prayer. It sounded like he was saying something he'd been holding inside for five years.
Grace gets up and paces her apartment. She walks from her bedroom to her living room to her kitchen and back again. Her mind won't stop. Her body won't stop moving. Everything inside her is vibrating with nervous energy.
At 11 PM she tries to go to bed. She lies down and closes her eyes. Sleep doesn't come.
At midnight she's still awake thinking about what she's going to say to him tomorrow. She thinks about being strong and cold and professional. She thinks about walking in and treating him like a stranger. She thinks about making it clear that whatever they had is gone and it's not coming back.
But her heart doesn't believe that and her heart is the problem.
At 1 AM she gets up and makes tea. She sits on her couch in the dark and watches the city lights from her window. Somewhere out there, Ryan is probably sleeping peacefully. Probably not thinking about this at all. Probably just going through the motions of his easy life.
That thought makes her angry. She holds onto the anger because anger is better than the other feelings. Anger is stronger. Anger doesn't crack like sadness does.
At 2 AM she showers. The water is hot and it stings a little bit and she pretends that's from the temperature and not from tears she won't let herself cry. She washes her hair. She washes her body like she can wash away the feeling of seeing him again. It doesn't work.
At 3 AM she's lying in bed again and she's thinking about his voice. How he said her name like she was a name he'd been whispering to himself every night for five years. How his eyes looked hungry. How his whole body went still when he saw her like she'd stopped time.
She remembers the Ryan from before the wedding. The man who listened to her. The man who made her feel like being herself was enough. She wonders if that Ryan still exists somewhere inside the man she saw at the gala.
The sun comes up while she's still awake.
Grace hasn't slept at all. She's exhausted in a way that goes deeper than just being tired. Her whole body feels heavy like she's been carrying something too heavy for too long.
She stands in front of her mirror for what feels like an hour deciding what to wear to this meeting.
Professional would be a suit. Professional would be armor. Professional would say that this meeting is business and nothing more. But professional also feels like she's trying too hard. Professional feels like it would confirm that she's affected by him and Grace doesn't want to confirm that.
She chooses jeans and a simple cream blouse. Nothing fancy. Nothing that suggests she cared about looking good for him. She tells herself it's professional but it's not. Professional people don't spend forty-five minutes on their makeup. Professional people don't stand in front of the mirror trying different lip colors and then deciding against all of them.
Grace looks at herself in the mirror. She looks tired. She looks like a woman who didn't sleep. She looks like a woman who's about to see someone she's not supposed to still care about.
She uses concealer to hide the dark circles under her eyes. She fixes her hair. She tries to make herself look like she has everything together when everything inside her is falling apart.
By 9:30 AM she's sitting in her car in the parking lot of Sunrise Coffee. She's thirty minutes early. She told herself she was coming early to control the conversation. To have the advantage. To be ready before he arrives.
That's a lie. She's early because she needs time to prepare herself to see him. She needs time to build the walls back up. She needs time to be the version of herself that survived without him.
She sits in the car and watches people go in and out of the coffee shop. Normal people. People with normal lives. People who aren't about to have a conversation that might change everything.
At 9:55 AM she gets out of the car. She walks into the coffee shop slowly. She tells herself to breathe. She tells herself to be strong. She tells herself that whatever happens in the next hour, she will survive it because she's already survived worse.
The coffee shop is warm and smells like coffee and fresh pastries. She finds a table by the window. She sits down. She tells herself that she's prepared for this. That she knows what to expect. That she can handle hearing whatever he has to say without falling apart.
She's wrong about all of that.
At 10 AM Ryan walks through the door.
Grace sees him immediately and her breath catches in her throat so hard she almost chokes on it. He looks like he hasn't slept. His hair is messy like he's been running his hands through it. His eyes are red. There's a shadow of stubble on his jaw. He looks like a man who spent the entire night thinking about something he couldn't stop thinking about.
When his eyes find her across the coffee shop, something happens to his whole body. He stops moving. He stops breathing. He looks at her like he's seeing her for the first time instead of the first time in five years.
And Grace realizes something that terrifies her more than anything else.
He's not over it. Whatever happened between them, he's not over it. He spent five years married to someone else and he's still not over her. He built an empire and he's still not over her. He lived a whole life and nothing in it was enough to fill the space she left.
That realization should make her feel powerful. Instead it just makes her hurt because she understands it. She understands what it's like to build a life that never quite fills the empty space inside you. She's been doing that for five years too.
Ryan walks across the coffee shop toward her table. He sits down across from her. For a moment they just look at each other. Five years between them. Five years of pain and growth and everything that's changed. Five years of survival.
And still it feels like no time has passed at all.