Chapter 24 Sloane
Sloane
The sound of my heels on hardwood echoes through my apartment, sharp and jarring in the stillness. Back and forth across the living room, still in this damn navy dress that felt flawless three hours ago and now clings like evidence of my spectacular miscalculation.
Click-clack. Click-clack.
Each step drives Easton's ultimatum deeper into my skull. You choose. It's him, or it's your career here. It's him, or it's this family.
"How could he—" I rip the pins from my hair, sending strands cascading over my shoulders. The polished image from tonight unravels, one bobby pin at a time, scattering across the floor in sharp, metallic clinks.
I whirl toward the kitchen where Garrett stands, still and silent. His bow tie hangs loose around his neck, jacket draped casually over a chair, but his eyes—those warm hazel eyes that have become my compass—never leave me as I carve another trench into the rug.
He doesn’t speak. Doesn’t offer comfort or platitudes. Just steps into the kitchen with quiet determination, fills a glass with water, and sets it on a coaster in the middle of my path. A subtle act that says I'm here, without needing to say anything at all.
I ignore it. Spin to face him. Tears sting my tongue, mixing with the last traces of champagne that still coat my throat.
"He'll go to Kowalski. He said it. He’ll ruin everything—my career, yours. Just because..." The words catch in my throat, sharp and painful. Because I fell for you. Because for once, I wanted something that wasn’t part of the plan.
Garrett crosses his arms, leaning against the doorframe. He's not detached—he’s reading the moment like a play unfolding, giving me space to spiral, anchoring me without interfering. The patience of someone who’s been in overtime and knows you can’t force the win.
"Three passes," he says quietly, after my next lap around the coffee table.
"What?"
"You’ve walked past that water three times. Your feet have to be killing you."
They are. These heels made me feel untouchable earlier. Now they’re just punishment. But stopping still feels like surrender.
Garrett moves. No hesitation. He kneels in front of me, smooth and sure. His hands wrap around my ankle, warm and careful, fingers working the strap.
"Garrett, you don’t have to—"
"Shh."
The buckle gives way under his touch. He slips the heel off with a gentleness that almost undoes me. His thumb brushes my arch. My breath catches.
"Other foot."
I rest a hand on his shoulder, off balance in more ways than one. He removes the second heel, and the relief is so immediate it’s disarming—not just physical, but emotional. Someone seeing my pain and easing it without needing to be asked.
When he stands, I’m barefoot and somehow more grounded than I’ve felt all night.
"Whatever you decide," he says, calm and quiet, "I’ll understand. This is your career. Your family. If you need me to leave, I will."
That breaks me.
The adrenaline collapses in a sudden, overwhelming rush, and everything I've been holding back comes flooding out at once.
A sob tears from my throat—raw, jagged, the sound of something breaking that can't be put back together.
My knees buckle, and I have to grab the back of the couch to keep from falling.
I'm no longer the unshakeable marketing director who can spin anything. I'm just a woman staring into the same abyss that swallowed my mother whole.
"But I don't want you to go."
The words come out in a whisper, hoarse with vulnerability I've spent years burying. It's the first time I've said what I want instead of what I fear. It feels like the ground disappearing beneath my feet.
"I don't want you to go. And that terrifies me more than losing my job, more than Easton's threats, more than anything." My voice cracks completely. "Because I know how this story ends."
The trembling starts in my hands and spreads through my entire body like an earthquake. I can't stop it. Can't control it. Can't do anything but let the memories pour out like poison from a wound.
"I was eight years old," I whisper, and suddenly I'm not in my apartment anymore. I'm standing in our old kitchen, clutching my Barbie lunchbox, home from another day of pretending everything was normal.
The house is too quiet.
That's the first thing I notice when I push through the front door, my backpack heavy with homework I'm excited to show Mom.
Usually, there's music playing—she always has the radio on while she does the dishes or folds laundry.
But today, there's nothing. Just this thick, cottony silence that makes my ears feel funny.
"Mom?" I call out, dropping my backpack by the door the way she's always telling me not to. "I'm home!"
No answer.
The afternoon sunlight slants through the kitchen windows at the wrong angle, casting everything in this golden, underwater glow that makes the familiar feel strange.
The coffee pot is still on from this morning, the bottom of the glass carafe burned black and filling the air with the bitter smell of something ruined.
I reach up on my tiptoes to turn it off, the way she taught me, because leaving things on is dangerous.
That's when I see her.
Mom is sitting on the kitchen floor in her nightgown—the pink one with tiny flowers that she only wears to bed. It's three in the afternoon. I know because the big hand is on the six and the little hand is almost on the three, and that means it's time for my after-school snack.
She's not crying. She's not doing anything. Just sitting there with her back against the cabinets, staring at the wall like there's something really interesting written there that only she can see.
"Mom?" I drop my lunchbox, and it clatters against the linoleum. The sound echoes in the weird quiet, but she doesn't even blink. "Are you okay?"
I kneel down beside her, the cold from the floor seeping through my school dress. Up close, I can see that her eyes are open, but they look... empty. Unfocused and utterly blank, like she's not looking at anything at all.
"Did you hurt yourself?" I ask, because maybe she fell down and can't get up. Sometimes grown-ups fall down. "Do you need a Band-Aid?"
Nothing. She doesn't even look at me.
A scary feeling starts growing in my stomach, like when you're on a swing and you go too high and suddenly you're not sure if the chains will hold. I wave my hand in front of her face, the way kids at school do when they're trying to be annoying, but she doesn't react.
"I'm hungry," I tell her, because maybe that will make her remember she's supposed to take care of me. "Can I have a snack?"
Still nothing.
So I get up and make myself a peanut butter sandwich, standing on the step stool to reach the counter.
I put it on my special plate—the one with the rainbow—and I sit at the kitchen table to eat it.
The chair feels too big, and my feet don't touch the floor, so they swing back and forth while I chew.
Mom doesn't move.
I do my math homework at the table, writing the numbers carefully the way Mrs. Peterson taught us. Seven plus five equals twelve. Nine plus three equals twelve. When I get stuck on a hard one, I look over at Mom to see if she'll help, but she's still just... sitting there.
The shadows in the kitchen get longer and darker. My stomach starts growling again, but Mom hasn't moved to start dinner. She always starts dinner by now. Always.
That's when I notice the papers scattered on the counter—white envelopes with red writing that says things like FINAL NOTICE and PAST DUE. I can't read all the words, but I know red writing means something bad. It means you're in trouble.
I climb down from my chair and walk over to Mom again, these papers clutched in my small hands.
"Mom, there's scary mail," I say, my voice smaller now, because the feeling in my stomach is getting bigger and scarier. "The red kind that makes you upset."
But she doesn't answer. Doesn't even look at the papers. Just keeps staring at that empty wall with those empty eyes.
And that's when I understand, with the terrible clarity that sometimes comes to children in moments like this: Daddy isn't coming home. Not tonight, not tomorrow, not ever. And Mom... Mom is broken. Like a toy that stops working, or a TV that only shows static.
I'm going to have to take care of everything now. The bills with the red writing. The dinner that needs to be made. The bedtime stories and the good-morning hugs and all the things that make a house feel like home instead of just a place where broken people sit on kitchen floors.
I'm eight years old, and I'm the grown-up now.
The memory releases me like a hand letting go, and I'm back in my apartment, gasping for air that tastes like tears and terror. Garrett's face swims into focus, his expression painted with a kind of devastated understanding that makes me want to crawl into his arms and never come out.
"She sat there for three days," I whisper, my voice broken and raw. "Three days on that kitchen floor, and I had to... I had to do everything. Make my own meals, get myself ready for school, forge her signature on permission slips. I learned to pay bills before I learned long division."
Garrett doesn't speak. Doesn't try to fix it or explain it away. He just moves closer, slowly, giving me time to object, careful not to spook me. When his arms come around me, they're cautious. Gentle. Not trying to trap me, just offering shelter.
"I'm sorry," he says into my hair, and the simple words carry more weight than any grand gesture. "I'm so sorry that happened to you."
I break apart completely then, sobbing against his chest while he holds me through the storm. It feels like drowning and breathing at the same time—terrifying and necessary and somehow safe, even in the middle of falling apart.
"She gave up everything," I gasp between sobs. "Her job, her friends, her whole identity. All for a man who decided she wasn't worth staying for. And when he left, she had nothing. Was nothing. I watched her disappear, and I swore... I swore I'd never need anyone that much."
"But you're not her," Garrett says quietly, his hands moving in slow, soothing circles on my back. "You're not disappearing, Sloane. You're fighting."
The words sink in slowly, a quiet balm settling over the raw panic. I pull back just enough to look at him, this man who's seen me at my most broken and hasn't run. Who's offering to sacrifice himself to keep me safe.
"Easton thinks he's protecting me," I whisper, the pieces starting to shift in my mind. "But it feels like... it feels like being eight years old again. Being told I can't trust my own judgment. That I'll make the same mistakes she did."
Garrett nods, understanding flickering in his eyes.
"What if he's wrong? What if..." I take a shaky breath, the strategist in me stirring faintly, a familiar gear clicking back into place.
"What if this isn't about protecting me at all?
What if it's about controlling me? Keeping me small and manageable and grateful? "
"What do you think?" he asks, and there's something in his voice—not pushing, not directing, just... opening space for me to find my own way.
I think about the way Easton looked at me tonight. The disappointment. The assumption that I couldn't handle the consequences of my own choices. The way he talked about me like I was a problem to be solved instead of a person making her own decisions.
"I think..." My voice grows steadier, stronger. "I think I've been playing defense my whole life. Trying to prove I'm not her, trying to show I can handle everything alone. But maybe that's not strength. Maybe that's just another kind of cage."
Garrett's thumb brushes away a tear I didn't realize was still falling. "So what's the play?"
The question unlocks something in me—not a sudden transformation, but a gradual straightening of my spine. A slow return to myself. The woman who built impossible campaigns from nothing. Who turned crisis into opportunity.
"The play is that I stop being afraid of becoming my mother," I say, my voice finding its strength. "Because I'm not eight years old anymore. I'm not sitting on a kitchen floor waiting for someone else to fix everything. I'm Sloane fucking McKenzie, and I build solutions."
I step back from his arms, not because I don't want them, but because I need to stand on my own two feet. The tears have stopped, and something sharp and focused has taken their place.
"Easton thinks he's protecting the team by managing me. But what if he's wrong about the threat?" I start to pace, my mind kicking into gear. "What if it was never about us at all?"
Garrett watches me move, a slow smile spreading across his face. "What are you thinking?"
"I'm thinking about Vivian's face tonight. The way she looked at us on that balcony." My voice gains speed, sharpening with each word. "That wasn't professional disapproval. That was personal. Like she was seeing something that triggered her."
The strategy crystallizes in my mind, suddenly clean, sharp, and clear. Clean. Sharp. Unbreakable.
"The Northstar presentation," I say, and my voice is steel now. "That's not just about getting a sponsorship deal. That's about proving I'm not a liability to be managed. I'm an asset they can't afford to lose."
Garrett nods slowly, his expression shifting to match my intensity. "What do you need?"
I look at him—really look—and see not the man who tried to save me tonight, but the man who's willing to stand beside me while I save myself. The difference is everything.
"I need you to trust me," I say. "And I need you to let me win this my way."
"Done," he says without hesitation. "What else?"
The fear is still there, but it's transformed into something useful. Something powerful. Fuel for the fight ahead.
"The Northstar presentation." My words move fast now, energized. "If I don’t just win it, but dominate—if I make myself undeniably valuable—Vivian won’t be able to touch me. Once the deal is inked, she’ll be too focused on execution to worry about my personal life."
My voice is steadier with every word.
"This is what I do. I win impossible rooms. I change the narrative. I don’t disappear—I become the reason they can’t afford to lose me."
The tears are gone. Only steel remains.
Outside, Minneapolis gleams—no longer a threat, but a battlefield. And I’ve just found my strategy.
"Let’s get to work," I say.
And for the first time since Easton’s threat, I believe it. I can win this.