Chapter 21
Skyler
The milk in the bowl is turning a sickly, radioactive pink.
I’m sitting on Steven’s mid-century modern sofa, wearing nothing but gray boxers and a three-day-old sense of impending doom. Around me, the living room looks like a luxury luggage store exploded. My suitcase is sprawled open, hemorrhaging T-shirts, jeans, and socks.
Digging the spoon into the Fruit Loops, the sugar hits my tongue with a chemical spike. I’m not an architect today. I’m just a guy in his thirties eating nostalgia for breakfast at two p.m.
The front door lock clicks, and Steven enters. He stops in the entryway. There’s the rustle of his jacket being hung up, then a long, melodic sigh. He walks into the living room, stepping over a stray Armani loafer.
“I can’t believe Harley lived like this,” Steven says, looking at a pile of my shirts that I’ve used as a makeshift pillow on the arm of the chair. “I always pictured her as more organized. Not like a squatter in a Nordstrom catalog.”
I force a laugh that feels like sandpaper in my throat. Spreading my arms wide, I gesture to the chaos. “I’m hanging loose, Steve. Three decades of ironed creases and coordinated socks. It’s called being free; you should try it.”
He raises a single brow with his hands in his pockets, looking at me with the same curiosity he probably uses on his documentary subjects.
“Free?” he echoes. “You look like a man waiting for a ransom note that’s never coming. You’ve been on this couch for seventy-two hours. The only thing you’ve successfully designed is a cereal-based diet and a way to ruin a thousand-dollar sofa with body oil.”
My facade successfully cracks.
I drop the spoon. Clink. My gaze darts away from my brother, and I have a sudden interest in a floating cereal bit in my bowl.
“I’m stalling,” I admit. “I don’t know where to go. Whenever I leave the house, my brain assumes I’m going to drive to her dad’s place or the office. But then I remember I don’t have a plan.”
Anxiously, I fidget with the edge of the bowl, my thumb tracing the rim. My hands are shaking—just a fine, barely perceptible tremor. It’s the adrenaline of the escape finally wearing off, leaving behind a cold, hollow terror.
“I’m going to win her back,” I say. “But I don’t know how to start the first sentence. How do you apologize for a lifetime of screw-ups?”
He walks over and sits in the armchair across from me. Rather than offer comfort or give me a Thompson-approved “Get it done at all costs” lecture, he simply takes up space.
“You want the first sentence?” Steven asks. “Here it is: Step one, move out of your brother’s apartment. You can’t be a hero in your boxers on someone else’s furniture, Skyler.”
Since what’s in my savings is all that I have right now, I went straight from my parents’ house to Steven’s, but he’s right: I can’t win Harley back without getting my shit together.
“I need a job.” The thought is terrifying. I’ve always had a job, but I’ve never had to get one—not without the Thompson name doing the heavy lifting before I even walked into the room.
“Yeah,” Steven says, standing up. “A real one. One where the boss doesn’t call our father for a golf game on Saturdays. Until then, get dressed. You’re making the apartment smell.”
“Asshole,” I jokingly mutter, though he’s right. I haven’t showered in three days.
“What about the apartment with Harley?” He’s leaning against the kitchen counter, nursing a glass of water like it’s a high-stakes cocktail. “The one in the city. The mold-free sanctuary you had with her way back in the before-times?”
“It’s sitting there. Empty.”
“You’re still paying the rent?!” Steven’s voice cracks with a sharp, incredulous laugh. “Skyler, tell me you’re joking. You’re currently living in my guest room while paying three grand a month for a shrine to a relationship that ended at the altar?”
“It’s not a shrine,” I snap, though the bite in my voice is defensive.
“It’s a placeholder. In case she…in case she wants to go home one day.
I can’t let it go. If I give up the lease, I’m giving up the only place where we were actually happy.
I can’t go back there, not without her, but I can’t let anyone else live there, either. ”
Steven shakes his head, a slow, pitying motion. “Impractical sentimentality. It’s a Thompson trait, believe it or not. Let it go.”
I don’t answer. Instead, I reach for the newspaper Steven left on the coffee table.
It’s a physical object, something tangible I can focus on to drown out the sound of my own failures.
I flip past the business section—the names too familiar, too entangled with my father’s golf partners and the country club elite.
I can’t work for a firm that considers the Thompson name a branding asset.
Fingers turning gray with newsprint, I skim the local sections, my eyes jumping over advertisements for luxury condos and “stately” renovations. It’s all the same: bleached wood, floor-to-ceiling glass, spaces for people who want to be seen but never truly looked at.
Then, I freeze.
There she is.
It’s a grainy, black-and-white photo on page four, tucked into an article about a court ruling against a predatory landlord.
She isn’t the subject of the photo, but she’s in the background, standing behind a woman I recognize as Mrs. Delgado.
Harley isn’t looking at the camera; she’s looking at her client, her hand on the woman’s shoulder, her face set in a line of fierce, uncompromising pride.
The headline reads: Victory for the Vulnerable: County Office Secures Stay of Eviction.
I stare at her. The pixels are rough, but I can see the intelligence in her eyes, the way she carries herself—not as a Thompson accessory, but as a woman who knows exactly what she’s worth. She looks powerfully real.
“Sky?” Steven’s voice is quieter now.
“Look at her,” I whisper, sliding the paper across the table.
Steven leans over, squinting at the image. “She looks good. Tough. Doing the work.”
“I’ve been a fool.” I sit up from my slump, the lethargy of the last three days falling away like dead skin. My posture, usually a product of social conditioning, becomes a product of intent.
“I’ve been trying to figure out how to win her back,” I continue, my voice gaining a clarity I haven’t felt since I proposed.
“I thought if I just apologized enough, or bought enough flowers, or showed her the apartment was ready, she’d see me.
But she saw me at the altar. She saw exactly who I was. ”
I glance at the photo again. Harley isn’t waiting for a rescue…she’s the one doing the rescuing.
“I don’t need to win her back,” I say. “I need to become someone she can actually respect. Whether she ever talks to me again or not.”
Carefully folding the newspaper along the creases, I make sure Harley’s face is protected in a small, neat square. Then, I tuck it into the pocket of my bag. Not as a shrine or a memento, but as a blueprint.
“I’m not taking a job at a firm like Peterson’s,” I tell Steven. He’s watching me now, his skepticism replaced by a cautious, dark interest. “I don’t want to design another mansion for people who only care about the crown molding. I’m going to find work that matters, even if it’s small and ugly.”
“Not to self, Sky, don’t call the job ‘small and ugly’ during the interview.” I shoot him a look and he continues with a warning, “The Thompson Foundation won’t like that.”
“The Thompson Foundation can rot.”
Harley Matthews didn’t walk out to make me a better man; she walked out to save herself.
And the least I can do is finally start building a man worth saving.