Chapter 30 Sloane
Sloane
The elevator doors of my apartment building slide shut with quiet finality. My reflection stares back from the polished steel—hollow-eyed, pale, wearing a blazer that still carries the sharp scent of corporate humiliation and my own spectacular failure.
Seventeen missed calls. The number glows accusingly from my phone screen as I fumble with my keys. Seventeen desperate attempts from Garrett to reach me, to explain, to fix what he just destroyed with his grand fucking gesture.
I don't listen to the voicemails. Don't read the texts flooding in. Whatever words he's pouring into the digital void—apologies, justifications, promises—none of it matters now. The narrative has already been written, and I'm not the brilliant marketing director in this story.
I'm the puck bunny who cost the team a nine-figure sponsorship deal. Who got him suspended.
My apartment door swings open to reveal my sanctuary from this morning—coffee mug still on the counter with my lipstick stain, morning paper folded beside it, everything exactly as I left it when I thought I was walking into my moment of triumph.
Now it feels like a crime scene. Evidence of the naive woman who believed she could have it all.
My eyes land on Steve.
The ridiculous blue sloth grins at me from my armchair, that dopey, permanent smile stretched across his fuzzy face. What felt like a monument to our impossible happiness now looks like a gravestone marking the death of my common sense.
How could I have been so catastrophically stupid? I kept a giant stuffed animal won by a hockey player in my living room like some lovesick teenager when I should have been protecting everything I'd worked for. While I was playing house with carnival prizes, the wolves were circling.
My phone buzzes again. Then again. Each sound is a sharp jab against my skull.
Steve keeps grinning at me, and suddenly I can't breathe past the rage tightening in my chest.
"You think this is funny?" My voice cracks as I stride toward the chair. "You think any of this is fucking funny?"
I grab Steve by his ridiculous blue throat and hurl him across the room. He hits the wall with a satisfying thud, his smile finally wiped away as he lands face-down on the hardwood.
But it's not enough. Nothing will ever be enough to contain the fury burning through my veins.
He took my moment.
The thought explodes through my brain, sudden and absolute.
MY moment. The presentation I'd spent months perfecting, the deal I'd crafted from nothing, the victory that was supposed to prove I belonged in that boardroom—and he took it and made it about himself.
About us. About his guilt and his need to play the fucking hero.
I storm to the kitchen where Garrett's coffee mug sits beside mine—the one with the little chip I never had the heart to return. The ceramic feels solid in my grip. Real. Something I can actually break.
"You ruined everything!" I scream at the empty apartment, my voice raw and feral. "It was MINE! It was supposed to be MINE!"
I hurl the mug at the wall with every ounce of rage in my body. It explodes in a shower of ceramic shards, coffee staining the white paint. The sound of destruction is beautiful.
But it's still not enough.
I whirl toward my work station where neat stacks of papers sit organized like the life I used to have. Quarterly projections. Marketing strategies. All worthless now. All evidence of the career that just died because the man I loved couldn't keep his mouth shut for five fucking minutes.
My hands shake as I sweep the first stack off the counter. Papers flutter through the air, useless and drifting. I grab another stack—my presentation notes, the backup materials—and send them flying too.
"Ten years!" I'm sobbing now, but I can't stop. "Ten years I worked for this! Ten years proving I was more than what they wanted to see!"
Books tumble from shelves. Picture frames shatter. My laptop crashes to the floor, the screen spiderwebbing with cracks.
And through it all, my phone won't stop buzzing.
The sound cuts through my rage, sharp and jarring. I stumble to the counter, grabbing the device with trembling fingers. The screen floods with notifications—missed calls, texts, voicemails. An avalanche of notifications—panic and desperate attempts to reach me.
Nineteen missed calls from Garrett.
Text after text: "Sloane, please answer." "I'm sorry. God, I'm so sorry." "Let me fix this. I can fix this."
Fix this? There is no fixing this. No walking back from what he did to me in that room.
A sharp knock on my door cuts through the destruction.
"Sloane!" Garrett's voice, muffled but unmistakable. "Please, I know you're in there. Your car's in the lot."
I freeze among the wreckage, papers scattered around my feet in pointless disarray.
"Sloane, please. Just let me explain—"
"GO AWAY!" The words tear from my throat, raw and vicious. "I don't want to hear it!"
"I know you're angry—"
"ANGRY?" I'm at the door now, pressing my palms against the wood like I can physically hold him out. "I'm not angry, Garrett. I'm destroyed. Do you understand that? You destroyed me."
"Let me in. Please. Let me apologize properly—"
"No." My voice drops to something cold and final. "You don't get to do this. You don't get to show up here and make this about your guilt."
But he's still talking through the door, his voice breaking with desperation. "I know I fucked up, but I was trying to show them how proud I was of you. I was fighting for you—"
"FIGHTING FOR ME?" The words explode out of me with enough force to rattle the frame. "I DIDN'T NEED DEFENDING! I needed a partner!"
"I was your partner! I am your partner!"
Something in his tone—the desperate, possessive edge—unlocks my door. Not because I want to let him in, but because I need him to see what he's done. Need him to witness the wreckage.
I tear the door open, and he stumbles back like he's been hit. His eyes go wide as they take me in—tear-streaked, shaking, standing in the doorway of my destroyed apartment.
"Jesus, Sloane—"
"Look at it." My voice is steady now, cold as winter. "Look at what your grand gesture cost me."
He steps inside, his gaze sweeping over the scattered papers, the broken ceramic, the chaos that used to be my ordered life. When his eyes meet mine again, they're bright with unshed tears.
"I can fix this," he says, and his words only fuel the fire. "I'll talk to Miller. I'll release a statement explaining that I acted alone, that you had nothing to do with my outburst—"
"Stop." The word is a blade. "Just stop talking."
But he can't stop. Won't stop. "I'll make them understand that you're brilliant, that your presentation was flawless—"
"You still don't get it." I'm backing away from him now, putting distance between us like he's contagious. "You still think this is about the presentation failing. About me getting fired."
His brow furrows, confusion replacing desperation. "Isn't it?"
"No, you fucking moron. It's about what you said. How you said it." I can barely speak past the rage choking me. "You stood up in that room and made my professional competence about your personal feelings. You turned me into someone who needed defending instead of someone who earned respect."
"That's not—I didn't—"
"You did." Each word is deliberate, surgical. "You took my moment—the biggest moment of my career—and you made it about you. About your pride. Your need to be the hero."
He takes a step toward me, hands raised gently, cautiously. "Sloane, that's not how I meant it—"
"It doesn't matter how you meant it!" My voice cracks, sharp and sudden. "What matters is what you did! In front of a room full of executives, you reduced me to someone's girlfriend instead of someone's colleague. You confirmed every sexist assumption they've ever made about me."
The words hang between us, sharp and decisive, and I watch understanding finally dawn in his eyes. But it's too late. Too fucking late.
"I was trying to support you," he whispers, and there's something broken in his voice that makes my chest ache even through the fury.
"No, you were trying to save me. There's a difference." I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand, leaving streaks of mascara. "I didn't need saving, Garrett. I needed you to trust that I could handle myself."
"I do trust you—"
"Do you?" The question comes out sharper than I intend. "Because from where I'm standing, it looks like you couldn't stand watching me succeed on my own. Like you needed to insert yourself into my victory so you could matter."
He flinches as if struck. "That's not—"
"Isn't it?" I'm circling him now, predator and prey, my bare feet crunching over broken ceramic. "Tell me the truth, Garrett. When you stood up in that room, was it really about showing them how great I am? Or was it about proving to yourself that you matter in my success?"
The silence stretches between us, heavy and damning. I watch him open his mouth to deny it, then close it again. Watch the truth settle over his features, darkening his expression.
"Maybe..." His voice is barely audible. "Maybe I needed them to know. Maybe I needed to matter."
There it is. The confession that destroys everything.
"Thank you," I say quietly, and he looks up with something like hope in his eyes. "Thank you for finally being honest."
The hope dies when he sees my face.
"I can't be with someone who sees me as a project to be rescued," I continue, my voice steady despite the tears streaming down my cheeks. "I can't love someone who needs to diminish me to feel important."
"Sloane, no—"
"Yes." The word is final, absolute. "I've spent my entire life proving I'm not my mother. Proving I won't disappear into someone else's definition of who I should be. And you..." I laugh, but there's no humor in it. "You turned me into exactly what I swore I'd never become."
"We can work through this—"
"No, we can't." I move to the door, holding it open with trembling hands. "Because you don't see the problem. Even now, after everything, you're trying to fix me instead of understanding that you broke something that can't be repaired."
He doesn't move. Just stands there in my destroyed living room, looking utterly gutted.
"Love isn't enough," I whisper, barely able to get the words out. "Not if it comes with the price of making me smaller."
"Sloane, please—"
"Get out."
"I love you."
"Then leave."
He stares at me for a long moment, and I see the exact second he realizes this isn't something he can talk his way out of. Can't charm or explain or hero his way through. This is the end, and there's nothing he can do to stop it.
He walks past me to the door, pausing on the threshold. "For what it's worth," he says without turning around, "you were magnificent in that room. Before I ruined it. You were everything I said you were and more."
The door clicks shut behind him, and I slide the deadbolt home with shaking fingers.
I lean against the wood, listening to his footsteps fade down the hallway, waiting for the relief that should come with his absence. But it doesn't come. There's only silence and the wreckage of my apartment and the crushing weight of what I've just done.
The adrenaline that carried me through the fight finally drains away, leaving me hollow and aching.
I slide down the door until I'm sitting on the floor, surrounded by the debris of my old life.
Papers lie scattered across the floor. Broken ceramic glinting in the afternoon light.
Steve the sloth lying face-down among the ruins, his smile finally gone.
Outside, Minneapolis moves on. Cars drive past. People head home from jobs they still have. The world continues while I sit frozen in this moment of destruction, hollowed out and empty.
I pull my knees to my chest and close my eyes, trying to remember what it felt like this morning when I thought I could have everything. But that woman—the one who believed in love and second chances and the possibility of being truly seen—feels like a stranger now.
She died in a boardroom an hour ago.
And I killed what was left of her on this floor.
The sobs eventually subsided, leaving something cold and hard in their wake. The grief was a fire, and it had burned away everything but the anger. And anger... anger was useful.