CHAPTER 40
Caroline
I’ve gone back to bare-knuckle fighting. But not the way I used to, not with the same purpose.
For years, it was about endurance, about forcing my body to obey, to harden, to survive whatever I poured into it. Back then I fought to prove I could outlast pain.
Now, I fight for something quieter and far more desperate.
Because one wrong move costs blood. And the moment blood is at stake, my mind empties. Every stray thought, every memory, every whisper of his name gone. All that remains is breath, instinct, the clean, brutal geometry of distance and impact.
I need that silence. I crave it.
It’s been two months since Edoardo stepped back from me, from us.
But was there ever a real us? Two months since I learned how heavy a heart can feel when it keeps beating anyway.
I don’t blame him. I never did. But understanding doesn’t soften the ache.
It only makes it lonelier and more deliberate.
The breakup didn’t just hurt. It broke me.
Days dissolved into weeks where his name stole the air from my lungs, where the smallest reminder sent heat rushing behind my eyes. I wasn’t myself, not the efficient, composed, meticulously controlled version of me the world expects. I was raw edges and unfinished thoughts, barely held together.
So, I’ve buried myself where I know how to breathe – work.
New York. San Francisco. London. Airports blur into one another, terminals and time zones stitched together by caffeine, red-eye flights, and relentless calendars. My schedule looks like a mosaic of urgency, every block claimed, every minute spoken for, no empty space left for grief to settle.
And now there’s another pin on the map, Spain. I have never been more grateful for a distraction. A new market, a new rhythm, a new reason not to sit still long enough to feel too much.
Usually, it’s London for two or three days, then Spain for another two, a constant pendulum swing across the Atlantic.
I’ve made two trips to Italy as well, walking the streets, studying the pulse of the market, trying to feel whether the ground would hold.
Spain has launched and our performance has been steady and impressive. Italy is next.
Momentum is easier than grief. Movement feels like control.
But missing him slips through anyway. I miss Edoardo in a way that feels physical, like a bruise you can’t stop pressing just to prove it’s real. Some days he’s a distant echo, soft enough to ignore. But most days, he fills the entire space of my mind until there’s no room left to breathe.
A deep voice in a café. A silhouette with dark hair on a street corner. A laugh that almost sounds like his.
Every time, my heart reacts before reason can intervene, a sharp jolt that leaves me disoriented for a second too long.
I’ve always been a master at compartmentalizing, building neat little rooms inside myself, closing doors, labeling feelings so they stay contained. But heartbreak ignores architecture. It seeps under doors, through cracks, into the foundation itself.
And it still hurts after two months. Still sharp. Still immediate. Like a jagged blade finding the same place over and over.
Connor has been around a lot more, splitting his time between London and New York to be with Celina, which means we see each other constantly. He boxes with me, holds the pads steady while I throw punch after punch, letting the rhythm beat the noise out of my head.
Sometimes, he stays together with Celina at my place instead of his. We collapse onto opposite ends of the couch after training, sweat-tired and quiet, the silence easy, unspoken. He never pushes me to talk about Edoardo, but he never pretends not to know either. It’s his way of being gentle.
Gigi is deep in wedding preparations, which inevitably pulls Elena in because Stefano treats her like the little sister he never had. Our circle is tight, woven too closely for anyone to disappear entirely. So, no matter how carefully I choreographed my distance, it happened.
I ran into Edoardo. Just once. And once was more than enough.
Seeing him felt like stepping into a memory. It was familiar and unbearable in the same breath. My chest tightened, like a hand closing around my heart, holding tight, and twisting. Air became something scarce, something I had to pretend I didn’t need.
It must be easier for Edoardo. Maybe it took him a few days, or two, three weeks, to fold our story into something past tense, something tidy enough to set aside. He cared about me, I know he did. Enough, at least, for the ending to sting a bit.
But he was the one who stepped away. So, it shouldn’t linger for him the way it does for me.
He’s probably lighter now, unburdened by the weight of my hesitations, my silences, and all the pieces of me I never quite learned how to hand over.
Maybe he wakes up without that quiet heaviness in his chest. Maybe the world feels open and clear again.
Sometimes I let my mind wander to darker places I can’t seem to stop visiting.
Maybe he’s already interested in someone else. Someone easier. Someone warmer. Someone who doesn’t make him feel like he was navigating without a map.
Maybe my name, if it ever surfaces in conversation, tastes like ash on his tongue, something accidental, something he’d rinse away without a second thought. Maybe he would wash the sound of me from his mouth the way you wash away a bad bite of food, over and over, until there’s no trace left.
The thought lands sharp, but I let it stay. Because believing he’s truly fine feels like the only way to explain why I’m the one still carrying the weight of us.
And maybe that’s the quietest heartbreak of all: not losing him, but knowing I might already be a memory he’s learned how to live without.
So, I stayed for one round at the drinks that Gigi and Stefano had organized, then I went straight to a boxing session with Connor afterward, chasing the impact, the burn, the merciful emptiness that only exhaustion can give.
“I think he’s still into you,” Celina said later, her voice soft with the kind of certainty that comes from watching too closely.
I shook my head, forcing a shrug I hoped looked careless. “I don’t think so. And whatever we had… it didn’t work.” I paused, then added lightly, almost teasing, “So yeah, relationships and I aren’t exactly on speaking terms, baby girl.”
The joke landed. But it tasted hollow in my mouth.
The entire time, I fought the simplest instinct and did not look at him. I kept my eyes moving, fixed on the floor, my hands, the far wall, anything that wasn’t his face. I didn’t let my gaze search for him, didn’t let it linger, not even for a heartbeat.
Because I knew the truth with a frightening certainty: If I really looked, if I allowed myself even two seconds to see who he was now, to see the familiar lines of a face I still knew by heart, every fragile wall I’d built would collapse.
And I wasn’t sure I would survive the fall.