Chapter 5

Ava Miller POV

The Brooklyn Botanic Garden was lush, verdant, and heavy with morning dew.

It was a sanctuary in the middle of the city.

It was also where Ethan had told me he wanted to grow old with me.

I stood behind a wall of blooming hydrangeas, watching.

Maya was waiting in the car at the curb, the engine running. My suitcase was in the trunk. My ticket to Portland was in my pocket.

Ethan and Chloe were posed by the pond. A photographer was crouched in the bushes-staged paparazzi, capturing a lie.

"Ethan, look at me," Chloe said, posing with her hand dramatically on his chest. "Do you remember this place?"

Ethan put on a show of confusion. He rubbed his temples as if in pain. "I... I think so. I feel... a connection."

"To me?" Chloe asked, batting her eyelashes.

"Yes," Ethan lied. "It's coming back. The love. It's all coming back to you."

He dropped to one knee.

I felt a physical snap in my chest. It wasn't a heart attack. It was the tether.

The invisible rope that had tied me to him for seven years. It finally gave way.

I didn't feel pain anymore. I felt weightless.

I walked out from behind the bushes.

Chloe saw me first. Her eyes widened. "What is she doing here?"

Ethan stood up quickly. The mask slipped for a second, revealing the arrogance beneath. He looked annoyed. "Ava. I told Mark to handle you."

I walked right up to them. I didn't spare a glance for Chloe.

I looked straight into Ethan's eyes. The eyes I used to write poems about.

They were just eyes now. Brown. Ordinary. Empty of the starlight I had invented.

"You don't have amnesia, Ethan," I said. My voice was calm. It carried clearly over the water.

"Excuse me?" he scoffed. "I don't know who you are."

"You know exactly who I am," I said. "I'm the girl who rewrote your papers in college so you wouldn't fail.

"I'm the girl who lied to the police when you got into that brawl at the club.

"I'm the girl who held your mother's hand as she took her last breath because you were too drunk to be there."

Ethan's face went pale. "Shut up."

"You can have the narrative," I said. "You can have the fake memory loss. You can have the influencer. You can have the empire."

I reached into my pocket. I pulled out the ring.

"But you can't have my dignity."

I placed the ring on the stone bench beside him. It hit the granite with a sharp, final clink.

Then, I pulled a folded piece of paper from my pocket. I placed it under the ring.

"What is that?" Chloe demanded.

"A reminder," I said.

I turned around.

"Ava!" Ethan called out. There was something in his voice. A crack? A hesitation? "If you walk away now, you get nothing. No money. No support. You'll be nothing."

I didn't stop walking. I didn't look back.

"I'm already something you'll never be, Ethan," I said to the air. "Free."

I got into Maya's car.

"Is it done?" she asked.

"Yes."

"What did the note say?"

I watched the gardens disappear in the rearview mirror.

"It said: *I remember everything.* And underneath: *So do I.*"

Maya handed me a thick envelope. "Your new ID. Olivia Carter. The flight leaves in two hours."

"And the diary?" I asked.

Maya patted her bag. "Safe with me. If he comes for you, we leak it. It's the smoking gun-proof of the fraud, the years of compromising the family business. It's a nuclear bomb."

"Keep it safe," I said.

We drove to JFK in silence.

When the plane took off, I pressed my forehead against the cool plastic of the window. New York City shrank beneath me. The skyscrapers turned into toys. The Reed empire turned into dust.

I touched the cast on my arm. It would heal. I would heal.

I closed my eyes and, for the first time in seven years, I didn't dream of Ethan Reed.

I dreamed of rain in Portland.