THE PEONIES ON THE FLOOR WERE JUST THE BEGINNING OF A BRUTAL TRUTH

"I'm not standing in your shadow, Corey," Maya argued, though the conviction in her voice was entirely hollow. She clutched the phone tighter, the hard plastic casing digging into her palm. "I built a life. A real life. Isaiah is kind, he’s stable, he doesn't—"

"He doesn't make you feel like you're jumping off a cliff every time he touches you?" Corey finished for her, his tone sharp. "Is that what you were going to say? Maya, you called me. That tells me everything I need to know about your 'real life'."

Zoe shook her head frantically, mouthing the words Hang up! but Maya was frozen, trapped in the gravitational pull of a past she thought she had successfully buried.

"What do you want from me, Corey?" Maya asked, her voice cracking. "You walked away first. You left the city, you changed your number, you didn't look back for six months until it was too late."

"I left because I knew you were settling for me too, just in a different way," Corey fired back, the old anger flaring up between them like dry brush. "We burned each other out, Maya. We were toxic, beautiful, and completely unsustainable. Isaiah gives you peace. And now you're panicking because peace is boring compared to the wreckage we left behind."

"It's not about being bored!" Maya’s voice rose, catching the attention of a boutique assistant who quickly retreated behind a rack of lace gowns. "It's about... God, I don't even know what it's about anymore. Isaiah is gone. He took off his ring and put it on the counter before he walked out. I saw him do it."

Corey went dead silent. The background noise on his end—what sounded like city traffic and the hum of an office—suddenly faded into focus. "He left his ring?"

"Yes," Maya whispered, tears spilling over her lashes again. "He's gone, Corey. The caterers are booked, the venue is paid for, my parents are flying in tomorrow, and the man I was supposed to spend my life with just walked out because I couldn't be honest with him."

"Well," Corey said, his voice dangerously soft. "It sounds like you have a very big decision to make before tomorrow morning. Do you chase the ghost, or do you chase the man who walked away because he finally realized he deserved someone who actually loved him?"