11
EMILIA
I had the whole weekend to think about it, and I decided not to go talk to him.
Not out of spite. Not even out of fear.
I just…didn’t want to.
And that was enough of a reason.
He didn’t ask again.
He didn’t corner me by the coffee machine or follow me down to the lobby. He didn’t linger by my door after meetings or try to casually catch me during breaks.
He simply let the silence stretch between us.
And I let it stay.
Somewhere in that silence, he understood.
I had given him a non-answer, and in that non-answer was everything he needed to know.
That I wasn’t going to sit in a room with him and unpack what he did. That I wasn’t going to hand him the pieces of my heart so he could look at them and say, “Oh, this is where I went wrong.”
He had his chance to see me. To know me. To ask.
And he never did.
I never told him I wanted to talk. I never followed up. I never knocked on his door or lingered near his office. And he didn’t either.
We became polite strangers again. Some mornings we passed each other in the hall, and he’d nod with a half-smile that never reached his eyes. I returned it with the same flat professionalism.
He stopped asking for my input during meetings. Stopped pausing to explain the nuances of briefs like he used to. Stopped pretending I was anything more than just another set of hands on his schedule.
He accepted my silence.
Not like a man defeated.
But like a man who finally understood that forgiveness wasn’t something owed. And sometimes, not even something granted.
Maybe I could’ve sat him down. Looked him in the eye and said, “This is how you hurt me.”
Maybe it would’ve brought closure. Maybe it would’ve helped him grow.
But I didn’t owe him that growth.
Not when I had to build mine on my own.
I had spent months making myself smaller, simpler, easier to be around, just so he wouldn’t pull away. And when he finally did, it had nothing to do with who I was and everything to do with who he refused to be.
So no, I didn’t talk to him.
I moved on.
Quietly.
Abruptly.
Just like he once did.
And that was the end of it.
At least for me.
Your decision led to Emilia and Dean not ending up together.
If you want to explore the other outcomes and see how the story could have unfolded differently, go back to Chapter 7 and make a different choice.