His One Night Obsession

Done

Florence's POV

We were three movies deep.

I couldn't remember which ones exactly. They blurred together the way comfort watching does. Familiar enough to follow without demanding anything from you, designed specifically for evenings like this where the point wasn't the plot but the company, the snacks, and the particular safety of being somewhere warm with someone you trusted completely.

Charlotte had thrown her legs over the arm of the couch, a blanket pulled up to her chin, working through her third handful of whatever we'd opened last. I sat beside her with my knees pulled to my chest, a throw pillow wedged between my back and the armrest, watching the screen without really seeing it. The glow from the television painted everything in shifting blues and whites, creating a cocoon of light in my otherwise dark living room.

Somewhere between the second movie and the third, I'd started actually laughing at things.

Not the fake kind. Not the kind you produce to reassure the person next to you that you're doing better than you are. The real kind. The kind that catches you off guard at something ridiculous on screen and comes out before you've decided to let it. It had surprised me the first time it happened, that laugh, like running into someone you hadn't seen in a long time and hadn't realized you missed. I'd felt Charlotte glance at me when it happened, but she'd been smart enough not to comment, not to draw attention to it and risk scaring it away.

That was when something shifted.

It wasn't dramatic. It didn't announce itself. It arrived the way most important things do. Quietly and between moments, somewhere in the middle of a scene I wasn't paying full attention to.

I was tired.

Not the tired of three weeks of grief and not enough sleep and not enough food, though that was still there underneath everything, a constant hum of exhaustion in my bones. A different tired. The tired of the weight of it all. Of waking up and having it be the first thing, before coffee, before consciousness fully arrived, just Carter's face and the memory of his betrayal waiting for me in that space between sleep and waking. Of carrying his choices around like they were something that belonged to me when they had never been mine to carry in the first place.

I was tired of feeling like maybe I'd done something wrong.

The thought had been circling for weeks, that whisper that maybe if I'd been different, better, more attentive, less focused on work, more spontaneous, less predictable. Maybe then he wouldn't have strayed. But sitting there in the half-light of my living room, something clicked.

I hadn't done anything wrong.

I'd loved him correctly and completely and with everything I had, and he'd taken that and made his own choices with it. Those choices were his, not mine. Not a reflection of my worth or whether I'd been enough. I had been more than enough. I had been extraordinary, and I had the receipts. Four years of them, memories and photographs and moments I'd given freely and fully, and none of them pointed back at me as the problem.

That thought arrived with a clarity that felt almost physical, like stepping from a dark room into sunlight.

I was Florence. I was smart and driven and the kind of woman who built things. Real things, with my own hands and my own intention and my own money. I had a penthouse with a single-button elevator and a best friend on my couch who'd shown up uninvited and stayed for three weeks without being asked, who'd put her own life on hold because she loved me. I wasn't going to spend one more evening in this apartment feeling dead inside, letting Carter's choices hollow me out from the inside.

I was done with that.

The decision settled over me clean and certain. No drama, no announcement, just a door closing on one thing and the quiet awareness of space opening up on the other side of it. Something in my chest loosened, a knot I hadn't fully realized was there until it began to unravel.

I looked over at Charlotte.

She was still watching the screen, completely unbothered, her jaw moving slowly as she chewed, completely at peace with the evening and with herself the way Charlotte always was. She hadn't pushed me toward this moment. She'd just stayed close enough that when I arrived at it on my own, she was right there, exactly where I needed her to be.

"Charlotte," I said her name the way you say something when you've made up your mind.

"Hmm," she murmured, still focused on the television, her hand moving back into the bowl.

I pulled in a breath, feeling it fill my lungs completely for what felt like the first time in weeks.

"Let's go clubbing," I announced.

The hand stopped in the bowl.

Charlotte turned her head and looked at me slowly, like she needed to verify with her own eyes that those words had actually come from my face. Her expression moved through surprise and then something she was working very hard to keep contained, a brightness gathering behind her eyes that she wasn't quite ready to release yet. She was checking first, making sure I meant it before she let herself react, before she allowed hope to take root.

"Really," she said it carefully, her voice soft with restrained excitement. "You really want to?"

I held her gaze and nodded, feeling more certain with each passing second. "I need to get out of this mood." I brushed the crumbs off my lap and stretched my arms above my head, feeling the length of my own body for the first time in weeks, something waking up in it, blood moving faster, warmth spreading. "I need air. Music. People. Something that isn't these four walls and my own thoughts on repeat."

Charlotte stared at me for exactly one more second, searching my face for any sign of hesitation.

Then she smiled. The full one. The one that started slow and then took over her entire face, bright and certain and completely uncontainable, lighting up her features like sunrise. She sat up straight and pulled her legs off the arm of the couch and set the bowl down on the coffee table with the energy of a woman who'd been ready for this conversation since the moment she'd walked through my door three weeks ago and had simply been waiting with extraordinary patience for me to get there.

"There's actually this club," she began, and I could already hear the excitement organizing itself in her voice, words tumbling faster. "I've been wanting to go for weeks. It's owned by Killian Lennox."

She said the name like it meant something, like I should recognize it immediately.

I searched my memory and came up empty. "Lennox," I repeated, turning it over in my mind, trying to place it. "Where do I know that name from?"

Charlotte's expression shifted into something that was equal parts disbelief and offense, her mouth falling open slightly. "Seriously," she said, staring at me like I'd just admitted to not knowing who the president was. "You don't know who Killian Lennox is. Flora. I talk about him basically every single day."

I got up and started collecting the snack situation from around the couch. Cups and wrappers and the bowl she'd set down, moving toward the kitchen with my arms full. "I apologize for not retaining information about every man you mention," I called back over my shoulder, unable to keep the amusement out of my voice. "You mention a lot of men, Lottie."

"I was so rudely interrupted," she raised her voice after me, the pout coming through clearly even from the other room. I could picture her expression without seeing it. "As I was saying. I have connections, so getting in won't be a problem. We walk straight to the front."

I came back to the doorway of the kitchen and leaned against the frame, looking at her. She was already sitting differently. Straighter. Animated. Her whole body had reorganized around the prospect of a night out the way a plant reorganizes toward light, every part of her oriented toward this new possibility.

"Alright then," I said, feeling something like anticipation stir in my chest for the first time in weeks. "Let's start getting ready."

She was on her feet before I finished the sentence, crossing to her bag in three quick strides, pulling it open and producing a dress with the confidence of someone who'd packed for this outcome specifically. She held it up and looked at me over it with an expression that told me she'd been carrying this backup plan for weeks, just waiting for the right moment.

I stared at her, shaking my head in amazement.

"I always leave home prepared," she said, answering the question I hadn't asked out loud, her grin widening.

"God," I shook my head slowly, feeling affection wash through me. "What are you, a mind reader?"

"No," she said, crossing the room and grabbing my hand, starting to pull me toward the bedroom, her fingers warm and certain around mine. "Just your best friend." She grinned back at me over her shoulder, her eyes sparkling with mischief and joy. "Now come on. I'm dressing you tonight and I don't want to hear a single complaint about it."

I let her pull me, feeling lighter with each step, as if the decision itself had lifted something heavy off my shoulders.

And for the first time in three weeks, I didn't have to work at the smile that came.

It just did.