Chapter 29
I stare at Dane’s message like it’s a lit match pressed to my throat.
If I tell you, can you promise you won’t freak out?
The words shouldn’t gut me. But they do.
Because for weeks months maybe something inside me has been stirring awake.
Not softly. Not gently. But like splinters of memory falling through a cracked ceiling, collecting in messy, shimmering piles at my feet.
Pieces of a boy I once knew. A boy with too-quiet eyes and too-heavy shadows. A boy who used to sit alone at lunch and stare at the sky like he was begging it to break open and swallow him.
Dane.
My Dane.
The one Blake scrubbed from my mind without ever needing to say the words. Years with him were like being slowly drowned with silk and praise and ownership. He replaced my thoughts with his. My voice with his. My history with whatever made him shine brightest.
I forgot I came from a family of writers, painters, professors. I forgot I used to dream. I forgot I was allowed to exist outside of him.
And Dane…God, that boy. Those flickers of him soft, blue-lit memories have been floating back to me like dust motes in a sunbeam. Fragile. Beautiful. Almost too small to believe in.
But now?
Now Dane is real. Here. Wanting me. Waiting for me.
And I’m leaving him on delivered because I don’t know how to breathe around the truth.
Because Blake, my ex-husband, my almost-destroyer, sent me a message too.
A caveman invitation. To the one party, he swore he’d never host again. A masked night. Sin-soaked. Invite-only.
And he invited Pandora.
He doesn’t even know Pandora is me. His wife. His ghost.
It makes something hot and acidic coil in my stomach.
I need to end him. Not violently. Not dramatically. But truthfully. Finally.
I need to cut him from my heart so cleanly that nothing grows back.
If I want Dane, if I want anything real again, I have to purge the last of Blake’s hold.
So, I go to the bathroom.
And I start to become the woman Blake wanted.
So, I can kill her.
The shower is scalding, steam turning the room into a blurred watercolour. I wash my hair twice. Scrub my skin until it glows pink. I paint my lips a deep plum the one Blake always said was “too much” on me. Then I line my eyes in kohl so dark it feels like armour.
Next the dress.
A slip of fabric the colour of spilled ink. It clings like a promise, sliding over my skin with sinful intention. Slit to the hip. Low in the back. A neckline that whispers touch me.
Knee-high black boots. Leather hugging my calves like a lover.
Then the mask.
God.
The mask is everything.
Hand-painted obsidian with silver filigree curling across the cheeks and forehead like vines. Feathers fanning behind each ear, soft as whispers. Crystals catching the light in small, dangerous sparks. It covers half my face enough to protect me. Enough to reveal me.
My lips. My eyes.
The parts Blake always misunderstood.
I look… unrecognisable. Powerful. A little wicked.
Like a woman who could ruin a man with one kiss.
Maybe I am.
My phone buzzes.
Dane.
Again.
Another message:
Penn? Please. Just…message me back. I don’t want to lose you.
My heart caves in. I close the screen with trembling fingers because if I answer him now, I’ll shatter.
I grab a bottle of red wine from the bench and take a long swallow straight from the neck. It burns. Good.
I grab my coat. My clutch. My courage.
And I walk out the door, down the street toward the bar that used to be mine and Blake’s but now feels like a graveyard.
The city is alive tonight. Warm bodies. Perfume thick as honey. Sweat and cologne and spilled drinks. Music vibrating through the pavement. Laughter ricocheting off brick walls. The kind of night where anything feels possible. The kind of night where lies look like glitter.
The closer I get, the louder everything becomes. Bass thumping through my bones. Lights pulsing like a heartbeat. Voices rising in messy, drunken joy. I slip through the doors into the dark, into the heat, into the sin-soaked glow as Pandora.
And somewhere in this room, Blake is waiting for a stranger.
The bar hits me like a wicked, hungry wave the moment I step inside.
Bass pounding. Lights strobing. Bodies glistening under a low, hell-red haze that makes everything look sinful enough to eat. Sweat. Perfume. Spilled beer. Citrus. Musk. Temptation with a pulse. I breathe it in. Let it coat my tongue like a drug. Because tonight… I need to forget.
Forget Dane’s message. Forget Blake’s hold. Forget the girl I shrank into under someone else’s shadow.
The music wraps around me, sinking teeth into my skin as I weave through the crowd. Leather boots on sticky wooden floors. Heat pressing. Laughter tangling with bass. My fingers clutch my clutch, my heartbeat a drum I’m trying to outrun.
Everywhere I look, masks hide truth. But tonight, so do I.
I climb the stairs to the raised booth overlooking the dance floor. The mask hugs my cheekbones, breath warm and shaky behind it. The satin of my dress clings to my hips as I cross my legs, the heel of my boot dragging across the seat, slow and deliberate. I order a drink. My drink.
The one he used to pour without asking. Black Doris cider on tap. Lime slice. Salted rim.
It arrives, and I sip slowly. Watching. Waiting. Studying him. And God… Blake is everywhere.
He moves like he owns the night, like every beat of music belongs to him.
He glides through the packed crowd, slow, confident, masked, dangerous.
Women turn when he passes. Men shift aside like they know better.
Blake’s charm is a living thing, prowling with him, wrapping around whoever stands too close.
And he’s hunting. For me. For Pandora. I watch him from my booth, heart pounding with a thrill I don’t want to admit.
He steps behind one woman, his hand lightly touching her lower back, his head dipping to whisper in her ear.
She shakes her head. He tries another fingers brushing her arm, leaning close enough that his breath stirs her hair.
Another shake. Another. Another. Touching their hips.
Their wrists. Turning them gently to face him.
A hand cupping a chin. A thumb grazing a pulse point.
Soft murmurs to each masked face. Each rejection sharpens the edge of his focus.
He’s searching for his mystery woman. He’s searching for me.
His online obsession. His Pandora. His wife.
And I sip my cider and watch him look for a woman who is right here, above him, drenched in the music and anonymity he thinks will protect him.
A smile curls under my mask. There is power in being unseen.
Power in being the ghost that haunts him.
The bar staff slide my third drink onto the counter below, and Blake materializes there before they can deliver it.
He grabs it without looking, without asking.
Like muscle memory. Like instinct. He walks it up to my booth.
I don’t move. I don’t breathe. Not until his shadow covers my table. My smile curls under the mask.
There is power in being unseen. Power in becoming the ghost that haunts him. I don’t move.
“Fourth?” he asks, setting it down. His voice is a sinful whisper. Familiar. Unaware.
“Third”, I say seductively.
“Well…someone’s thirsty tonight, Pandora.” Our fingers brush. The zap is immediate. Sharp. Electric.
“Pandora?” I question, twisting a long piece of hair and sweetly looking up at him.
His body reacts before his mind can catch up chest tightening, breath hitching, stance shifting. Recognition flickers just a fraction. He feels me. Somewhere deep. Somewhere old. But he pretends. Blake always pretends.
He offers a hand. “Dance with me, Pandora.” A command dressed like a question.
I tilt my head. “Let me freshen up first…Casanova.” His groan is low, hungry.
I slip past him, fingertips brushing the place on his waist I know is sensitive. His breath stutters. His jaw locks. Heat rolls off him in waves as I walk away, leaving him swallowing fire.
The bathroom is a sanctuary. The mirror reflects a stranger. A woman who looks like a secret. Lips plum-dark. Eyes sharp beneath her mask. Dress hugging every curve she forgot she had.
Once, Blake made me small. Quiet. Agreeable. Forgettable. But Pandora? She holds the wildness. The voice. The hunger. The me I buried to survive him.
My phone buzzes. Dane. My heart twists painfully. Would he worship this version of me. He would recognise her. He’s the memory clawing through the fog Blake built around me. But tonight is not about Dane. Or love. Or healing.
Tonight is about purging Blake from my soul. I step back out. The bar hits me like heatstroke.
Blake’s waiting. Hand extended. Eyes blown wide behind his mask, chest rising like he’s starving.
I place my hand in his. The dance devours us.
His hands grip my waist like a lifeline. Our bodies slide together in a rhythm older than our marriage. Heat coils between us—unwanted, chemical, undeniable. His breath ghosts my throat. Mine catches.
We move like magnets, trying to break and bind at the same time. He whispers in my ear, filthy, needy, unhinged:
“Pandora…”
“Don’t run…” “Stay with me…” “You’re driving me insane…” His lips graze my neck. Memory claws up through my spine. Three songs. Three lifetimes. Three different versions of us burning down.
I laugh a sound wild and sharp, a version of myself I haven’t heard in years.
Then
Carrie bursts onto the floor like a neon hurricane. Her eyes lock on me. She grins feral, proud, wicked.
I’d texted her earlier:
Tonight, I’m burning it down. Tonight, I end him. Tonight, I choose myself.
She cuts between us with a cackle. Blake growls. She winks.
We swirl me, Blake, Carrie, heat and tension and rebellion twisting through us.
Carrie leans in. “God, this is delicious. Burn him alive, babe.”
I whisper flirty lies into Blake’s ear; promises I’ll never keep. Fantasies made of smoke. He devours every word.
Carrie takes my hands and twirls me away from him, laughing as we disappear into the bathroom again. Our cheeks flushed, lips glossy, hearts racing.
The mirror shows two women alive and electric. “This is it,” Carrie whispers, smoothing my hair. “Tonight, you end the article. Tonight, you end Blake’s grip. Tonight, you choose Dane. You choose you.” We stand there, breathing, holding hands, dizzy from the music and the truth.
The air between us thickens when I step back toward him. Not close enough to reveal, but not far enough to resist.
Blake’s eyes track me like I’m a flame he wants to swallow whole. His hand lifts, hesitates, then settles on the side of my neck, just his fingertips. Just a whisper of touch. But it detonates something low and molten inside me.
“Pandora…” he breathes, voice raw, like he’s been starving for years and only just remembered hunger. He doesn’t know it’s me. He should. His hands used to map every inch of my body. He should smell the truth beneath the perfume, the sweat, the mask.
But that’s the poison of Blake. He never saw me.
He saw only the shape he carved. Still. My body remembers the weight of his touch before my mind can curse it.
The heat of his palm at my throat, the slow drag of his thumb along my pulse point, the way his breath skims my cheek like he’s inhaling me.
I let him. Just for a heartbeat. Just long enough to witness the truth of what we were.
His other hand slides to my waist. Fingers firm.
Possessive. A man claiming something he already lost, my breath stutters.
My knees soften, traitorous. His mouth grazes the corner of my jaw, featherlight, a ghost of the intimacy he once controlled.
Not a kiss. A remembering. My heart punches my ribs.
My skin burns. His whispered, “Don’t vanish…
stay with me,” curls through me like smoke.
For a split second, A dangerous, trembling sliver of a second, I feel what I used to feel. What he conditioned into me. What I believed was love. But it’s hollow now. A pretty lie with sharp teeth.
“Blake…” I whisper, breath trembling with truth he can’t hear. He pulls back, eyes blown wide behind his mask, confused by his own reaction.
And that’s when I kiss him. Not for him. For me. A slow, sure, final drag of lips that tastes like ending. His hands tighten, desperate too late. I pull away first. I always do now.
His mouth parts like he wants to claim something, to demand, to name the feeling he doesn’t understand. But I’m already stepping back, slipping through the bodies, the heat, the pulse of the dance floor. His fingers catch air where I once stood. I turn once, mask still hiding my smile.
“Goodbye, Blake. My dear Casanova,” I whisper, tone slow and sharp as a blade. “Sometimes the truth is right in front of you. Sometimes it even catfishes you.”
His entire body goes still. Frozen. Shocked. Destroyed.
A goodbye disguised as temptation.
Then I walk out into the cold night air, mask still on, breath fogging, heart breaking and rebuilding at the same time. I did it. I purged him. I ended him. I ended us. And now…
Dane waits. The man who sees me. The man who remembered me before I remembered myself.
But first I had to reclaim the pieces Blake stole.
And tonight? I did.