Chapter Twenty-Seven – Theos POV
Present Day
Milan was a postcard, and I was a ghost smudged across its perfect surface.
I’d shown up because I’d said I would. I’d committed to the job the day everything with Gin started to fracture, back in that stupidly luxurious hotel room when fear made me stupid.
Now, the commitment felt like a life sentence.
The irony was a bitter taste in my mouth: I could keep a promise to a faceless client across an ocean, but I couldn’t find the words to make a single, real promise to the woman who mattered.
The studio was all exposed brick and industrial lighting, sleek and cold.
The clothes were pieces of art. The models were human gazelles, all sharp angles and vacant, beautiful stares.
They moved with a bored, practiced grace, draping themselves over props as the creative director barked instructions in rapid-fire Italian.
“Theo! Dai! More passion! It is longing, yes? Make me see the longing!”
I lifted my camera, my tool, my voice. I looked through the lens and saw nothing. A beautiful arrangement of shapes and colors. No story. No soul. My finger clicked the shutter. The sound was hollow.
My mind was 4,000 miles away. It was in a dusty mechanic’s shop in Hedgefield, with Gin clutching my arm after the truck broke down.
It was on a musty motel bed, arguing over pineapple on pizza.
It was on a sun-warmed rock by a hidden lake, her skin under my hands, her breath against my neck, feeling like the only real thing in the world.
A model—Lydia, or maybe Sofia—sidled up to me during a break.
She smelled like expensive perfume and ambition.
“Your work is incredible,” she said, her accent melodic.
“You have such an eye. Perhaps after, we could discuss… perspective? Over a drink?”
Her smile was a clear invitation. A month ago, maybe even a week ago, I might have said yes. It was easy. It meant nothing.
Now, it felt like an insult. To Gin. To myself. I looked at this stunning woman and felt absolutely nothing. “I’m behind on edits,” I mumbled, not meeting her eyes, and turned away. Her pretty pout was the last thing I saw as I retreated to the temporary darkroom they’d set up.
Alone in the red glow, the world shrank to the size of a photograph. But not the ones from today’s shoot. I pulled out my personal hard drive, the one labeled “Archive – Personal.” I scrolled past landscapes, cityscapes, random portraits.
And there she was.
Imogen.
Not just the recent ones from the wedding week—though I had hundreds, stolen moments while she slept, laughed, stared out windows.
But years of her. Gin at sixteen on the dock, biting her lip in concentration.
Gin at nineteen, caught mid-laugh, her head thrown back like she was tasting joy.
Gin at twenty-three, wrapped in a blanket on my parents’ couch after the funeral, her eyes holding a universe of grief I ached to fix.
I’d been photographing her my whole life.
Not as a subject. As my muse. As the quiet, beating heart of every beautiful thing I tried to capture.
I’d been in love with her since I knew what the word meant, and I’d been too much of a coward to ever say it.
I’d hidden behind my camera, behind teasing, behind a lifestyle of easy outs, terrified that if I reached for the real thing—the complicated, profound, everything thing that was Gin—I’d ruin it.
Turns out, I didn’t need to reach for it to ruin it. I just had to open my stupid mouth at the wrong time.
Wedding convenience.
The lie I’d told to shut up Brad felt like a cancer now. I’d reduced the most significant thing in my life to a throwaway line for a bunch of drunk groomsmen. I’d handed her own deepest insecurities the one piece of proof they’d ever needed.
Back at the sterile, modern apartment the agency had rented, I couldn’t sleep.
The bed was too big, too empty. I couldn’t eat.
The exquisite food tasted like ash. I’d walk the streets, past bustling cafes and stunning architecture, and all of it was just noise.
A beautiful, meaningless backdrop to the movie of my failure playing on a loop behind my eyes.
The commitment. That’s what I kept circling back to. I was here because I was committed to this job. I’d given my word. But what was my word worth? It was worth less than the silence I’d given Gin. Less than the truth I’d been too scared to tell.
I’d committed to being in Milan because it was easy. It was running. It was what I’d always done. The second things got real, got hard, got terrifyingly important, I booked a flight to another continent.
I was a fraud.
The breaking point came on the third day. We were shooting on a rooftop at golden hour. The light was perfect, a painter’s dream. The model was draped in silk, the city a gleaming sprawl behind her. The creative director was ecstatic. “Magnifico, Theo! This is gold!”
I looked through the viewfinder. I adjusted the settings. I framed the shot.
And I saw Gin’s face, not the model’s. I saw her rolling her eyes at me. I saw her soft smile in the morning light. I saw the devastating hurt in her eyes when I’d frozen her out.
My camera lowered. My hands, usually so steady, felt weak.
“Theo? What is it? The light is fading!”
“I can’t,” I heard myself say, the words foreign and sure.
“Che cosa? Cannot what?”
“I can’t do this.” I wasn’t just talking about the shot. I was talking about all of it. The life of surfaces. The endless, empty running.
I’d made the wrong commitment. I’d committed to the escape route, not to the person waiting at the end of the journey. Not to the journey itself.
An hour later, I was in the creative director’s sleek office, my stomach in knots. “I have to go. A family emergency.” The lie came easily. This one, at least, felt like it served a truth.
He argued, threatened, cajoled. He talked about contracts, reputation, and money. A lot of money.
None of it mattered. It was just… noise.
All I could hear was the echo of my own voice saying “wedding convenience,” and the deafening silence that had followed when I tried to call her.
I’d committed to the wrong thing. Now, I was going home to fight for the right one. Even if I was too late. Even if the only thing waiting for me was a closed door and the ghost of what I’d thrown away.
I had to try. For the first time in my life, I had to commit to something that scared me more than any foreign city or blank page ever could.
I had to commit to the possibility of her “no.”