Chapter 20
Finn
The lift is one of those old cage ones with steel bars and mirrors scratched at the corners. We step in without speaking. Theo hits the button, then wraps her arms around the folder. She stands beside me but feels miles away. The doors clank shut, and the sound echoes up my spine.
France.
What does that even mean?
New kit, new flat, new language I don’t speak. A new team that doesn’t know me, doesn’t owe me anything. Starting over. Again.
Maybe I should be buzzing, posting a smug wee statement online. But all I can think is: it’s not here.
It’s not her.
Theo’s reflection is a blur in the mirror. Straight shoulders, lips drawn tight and her chin slightly up. I don’t know if she’s furious or somewhere I can’t reach. Probably both.
I hear her breathing, though. Short, even inhales, like she’s counting them.
I want to say something to fill the silence, or maybe just to hear my own voice, make sure I still have one.
But I don’t trust my mouth. It’s full of gravel.
My back’s against the bars. I shift, and the lift groans like it doesn’t want to move.
Theo doesn’t look at me.
If I reach for her now, and she pulls away, I don’t know what I’ll do.
I scan the floor. There’s a bit of grit in the corner, a greasy thumbprint on the button panel. Her perfume’s faint but there. It winds itself into my centre, tighter with every breath, until I feel it in my teeth.
‘That was a surprise if ever there was one.’ It comes out a lot lighter than I feel.
‘You should do it.’ She sounds soft and nearly sincere. But it cleaves right through me.
‘What?’ My throat clamps down, throttling the syllables. ‘Marseille?’
She nods once, without turning her face my way. ‘Yes. Charlie’s right. This is a huge deal. For you, obviously. But also for Elite Edge.’
Ah. There it is.
‘So that’s what this is about.’ I try for a dismissive laugh, but my throat is too dry. ‘The agency.’
Of course. The agency comes first. Her job always does. And I get it, she’s brilliant. She deserves a full partnership and all the success she can get. More than a fuck-up with pink hair and a questionable past.
She fidgets beside me but still doesn’t look at me. That hurts more than it should. My body’s gone hypersensitive, everything’s turned up too high. The stale lift air, the hum of the lights, the hiss of the track as we sink lower.
‘I’m not saying it’s not personal,’ she murmurs. ‘But that’s… It’s a fantastic opportunity.’ Her mouth opens like she might say something real – then shuts with a breath through her nose.
I glance sideways. Whatever she’s holding in, it’s tearing through her. Pale cheeks, lips pinched, a sheen on her brow like she’s burning up from the inside.
‘Is that the PR line or yours, Theo?’
The pause is a brick to the sternum. Her knuckles tighten on the folder, and the silence rings like a fire alarm, loud enough to rattle my skull. I press the back of my head to the steel.
She still doesn’t answer.
‘What about…us?’ I ask.
Now her gaze shoots my way. Brief, sharp, and agonised. For a second, her throat works like she might speak, but nothing comes. Her whole body’s tense, a breath held too long.
I shift towards her – just enough for my arm to brush hers. ‘Theo, if I… Maybe I could…or you…’ I don’t finish it. My tongue’s too thick.
I can fucking see her pushing it all down.
Breaks my heart.
‘Don’t make this harder than it has to be.’ She sounds as if she’s angry at herself for almost hoping. ‘I will not stand in the way of your success. And I don’t think you’d want to stand in mine. This was only ever temporary, Finn. Until May.’
I let the words chew through me. I could beg and say the words. Fight to stay. But I’ve done that before. I’ve begged to be kept, knocked on that door for hours until my knuckles bled.
I can’t do it again.
And it feels like pulling a knife out of my own chest.
‘You ever think,’ I say, barely above the creak of the lift, ‘how different it could be if timing didn’t fuck everything?’ She goes still beside me, and I push on a little. ‘If things were…later. Or earlier. Or…’
Nothing from her but breath. One sharp inhale. ‘Finn. No.’
It shuts the thought down, and my chest cracks open. Quietly. Like it always does.
She adjusts her grip, arms crossed tighter now, as if she can hold it all in by force.
‘Try to see it this way: we did it. We didn’t just save your career, we made it shine.
You’re going to get the recognition you deserve.
You deserve the spotlight. Everything this will give you.
You deserve this more than anyone.’ Her breath falters on the final syllable.
I nod because I can’t do anything else. If I open my mouth now, I don’t know what’ll come out. A laugh, a scream.
Two floors down, two hundred feet deeper in the pit.
She’s already done with me. This is her goodbye. Wrapped in a bow, polished and polite.
I watch her hands instead of her face. I remember sucking those fingers into my mouth. I remember her thighs clenching around my hips. I remember us in her kitchen. Theo singing along to that daft advert jingle, making that green frog drink. I remember her laugh.
It felt like something we’d keep. Like we had time.
I thought I was more than a job. That we were more than the plan. But perhaps that was just me, dreaming on her time. I was never a real choice. Just the right problem at the right time. Something to fix. And a good time along the way.
I swallow, but it catches halfway. My chest is too tight to breathe right. Every inhale is shallow and wrong, pulled through a straw. I stare at the mirror above the panel. We’re reflected side by side, close but not touching.
I want to say, Don’t do this. Just ask me. I’ll drop the contract. I’ll torch the deal. I’ll stay. Fuck, I’ll stay forever.
But if she won’t ask, and I can’t offer…
Then maybe that’s the answer. Maybe we were never meant to survive the real world.
She’s giving me the out. That’s what this is.
A clean break wrapped in logic and ambition, so she doesn’t have to admit she’s scared too.
Scared I’ll fuck it all up. Scared she’ll choose me and regret it. And she’d probably be right.
Or she thinks I’ve already chosen. The money, the spotlight. As though that’s what matters most. As if I’d leave and forget her the minute I hit French soil.
I don’t blame her entirely. Because that’s what the old me would’ve done. I’m not that Finn anymore, and she should fucking know that.
But if I say it first, if I offer everything and she still tells me to go and sends me away – I won’t survive it. Not again. Not when it’s her.
I already tried, and she didn’t catch it. The pressure in my chest breaks like a hairline crack spidering across glass. My hands drop to my sides, and I stare straight ahead.
I’m not worth keeping.
She straightens, blinking hard as if the light’s too bright. I count the seconds till the ground floor.
Six.
Five.
Four.
I’m not enough.
Three.
I never was.
Two.
I never will be.
The lift slows and shudders to a stop, but I don’t move. Not while she’s still beside me. I try to speak, but there’s too much behind it.
The doors part. Cool air hits my face. Theo doesn’t move. She’s still got the folder locked to her chest. Her eyes stay on the floor.
‘Finn.’ Her whisper slices through me.
But it’s not enough to stop me. I step out and walk. I have to get… I have to…
The paper cuts into my palm where I’ve folded the edge of the offer. Each step forward burns hotter than it should. My spine’s damp, and the back of my shirt sticks.
No footsteps, no sound from the lift. I keep waiting for something. Her voice behind me, sharp or soft, anything.
But there’s nothing. Just the foyer stretching out.
This isn’t the version where she runs from me. This is the crueller version, where she stays inside and simply lets me go. Where I walk away, tearing at the seams, waiting for her to shout my name. And she doesn’t make a sound.
Bad timing. Two broken people.
This was never going to have a happy ending.
I want to turn back. God, I want to. I want one more glimpse of her, standing there, not letting go.
I can’t.
It’s not that I don’t want to. It’s that I’m too fucking scared she won’t be looking at me. Or worse: that I see in her eyes that this was never as real for her as it was for me.
Then the doors close.