LOVE IN THE WRONG DIRECTION

April 17th,2027. "YOU'RE THE WORST THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED TO ME!" The words tore out of me before I could stop them, raw and ugly and too loud for the quiet luxury of the penthouse we had somehow, impossibly, made into something that felt like home. The city glittered forty floors below us, indifferent and beautiful, a thousand lit windows full of lives that had nothing to do with the wreckage happening inside this one. The penthouse was silent except for my breathing — ragged, furious, terrified and the particular stillness of a man who had learned long ago that the loudest thing in any room was the thing he refused to say. Sebastian Vale stood across from me, perfectly still, grey eyes steady. He didn't flinch. He never flinched. What a lie, some quiet part of me thought, even as the words still hung in the air between us. Even the demons in hell would call him the best thing that ever walked into your life. And you know it. But I kept going anyway. Because I had to. Because if I stopped, if I let the silence in, I would fall apart completely and I could not afford to fall apart. Not tonight. Not with everything at stake. "I'm sorry," Sebastian said. His voice was low and even, the way it always was when he was holding something enormous very carefully. "I'm sorry for rushing you. I shouldn't have said what I said." He exhaled slowly. "Forget it. Forget me asking you to stay because you're in love with me. I should have held to the contract." A pause the kind that cost him something. "No feelings. That was the agreement. I—" "Stop," I said. He looked at me. "Can you just — stop?" My voice cracked on the last word and I hated it, hated the way it betrayed me, hated that even now, even in the middle of this, I couldn't be as composed as he was. "Can you be real for one second? Can you just say what you actually mean instead of wrapping it up so neatly that I can't even argue with it?" Something moved across his face. Something that in another life, on another night, I might have reached for. But I watched my husband's heart break and I kept going. Because a child's life depended on me breaking it. Because somewhere across this city, people were waiting to see if I would. Because the girl who had once bent herself into impossible shapes for a boy who didn't deserve it had sworn sworn she would never let love make her small again. And here she was. Here I was. Smaller than ever, in ways that had nothing to do with my body and everything to do with the choices pressing down on me from every direction. Almost a year ago, I thought, the words moving through me like something I was memorizing rather than living, I only knew this man theoretically. He was a case study. A reference in a textbook. A name that appeared in industry journals beside words like visionary and formidable and self-made. And now. Now I stood in his penthouse in the city we had navigated together, wearing the ring he had placed on my finger in a courthouse while Neemah stood on her tiptoes trying to see, arguing with him at midnight because something in me refused even now, even after everything to let him go quietly. Married to my ex-boyfriend's stepfather who was twenty two years older than me yet he made it feel like it was nothing. Married to the man I had not planned on loving, had specifically, contractually, categorically agreed not to love, and had loved anyway the way you love things that arrive without asking permission, that rearrange your furniture and learn your coffee order and sit with your grief without trying to fix it. Unbelievable didn't begin to cover it. "Am I grateful?" I said, my voice dropping to something I barely recognized. "For what you've done for Neemah, for me, for all of it?" I swallowed hard. "Absolutely. You gave me back something I didn't even know I'd lost. You looked at me like I was worth looking at. You never once asked me to be smaller." Sebastian's jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. "But," I continued, because there was always a but, because life had apparently decided that I was not allowed a single uncomplicated thing, "that's me being appreciative not in love." Those words pierced beyond my heart and I was the one saying it. I could only imagine how he felt right now. "Eliora." Just my name. Nothing else. The way he said it quiet, careful, like something he was trying not to crush — was almost enough to undo everything. Almost. "Don't," I whispered. He looked at me for a long moment. Long enough that I had to press my fingernails into my palms to keep my face still. Long enough that I memorized the exact quality of the silence between us the weight of it, the particular shade of grey in his eyes, the way the city light caught the silver at his temples. Then Sebastian Vale, the most controlled man I had ever met, did something I had never seen him do before. He was on his knees before me. Holding me. "I know. I dragged you into the public eye,I've made life for you so stressful all for the custody battle but forgive me for falling in love,El. Forgive me for letting my guard down even after I swore I wouldn't." There was a brief pause,he was crying. I was too but I didn't let my tears run down my cheeks for long. He continued. " I'm just a man who's been everything but lucky in love. I thought we'd be different,third time's the charm right? Please. Don't go. Don't leave me. I'd be lost all over again." How could I tell this man that all I wanted was to be his, publicly and privately but I just couldn't. All our shared memories floated in my head. If I didn't stop this,I'd break character. "Sebastian,I don't love you. This is a contract and I appreciate it. I want a divorce." I said flatly. "Please El,I'll correct everything I did wrong. If there's anything I said or did that" "I'm getting back together with Jalen.",I said,cutting him off. The words tasted like ash. I felt his arms go limp before they slid from my waist and I wanted God, I wanted to take it back. To tell him that my mouth had just committed the cruelest act of my life and that every single word of it was a lie constructed to save his daughter. That Jalen was the last person on this earth I would choose. That the only person I had ever wanted to choose again and again was standing in this penthouse. Him. My Seb. But I couldn't. So I stood still and let him believe it. He got up. He looked away first then back at me. His grey eyes still had tears in them. He dried the tears and for some reason,that broke me more. He picked up his jacket from the back of the chair with the quiet precision of a man who had learned to move through loss without making a scene. Straightened his cuffs. Crossed the room without hurrying. At the door he paused. He didn't turn around. "It's been nice doing business with you...Miss Moore." The door clicked shut behind him. And in the silence he left behind, I stood in the middle of the home we had made, in the city that had given me back my life, with the ring still on my finger and the divorce papers already drafted on my laptop and I pressed both hands over my mouth to hold in the sound that was trying to come out of me. This, I thought, is what it costs. To love someone in the wrong direction. To want a Disney ending in a life that never promised you one. I know this is the closest I'll ever get. And I had burnt it. The city glittered on, indifferent and brilliant, forty floors below. And somewhere behind me, on the kitchen counter where she had left it that morning, was the drawing Neemah had made of the three of us crayon-bright, slightly lopsided, labeled in careful eight-year-old handwriting: My family.