Chapter 7
1475 Words
Sophia’s POV
Days turned into weeks, and somewhere between “good morning” texts and midnight confessions, my life rearranged itself quietly around one person.
Colton Greene.
Even thinking his full name sometimes made me pause.
One of the youngest billionaires in New York. The man whose face lived on magazine covers and financial headlines. The man people rehearsed conversations for. The man who moved markets with a sentence.
And he was calling me.
Fifteen hours a day. Sometimes eighteen.
I don’t even know what we talked about.
That’s the strangest part.
We spoke about everything and nothing.
About how he hated the taste of green juice but drank it anyway because his trainer insisted. About how I once burned pasta and blamed the stove. About childhood summers. About fears neither of us admitted to anyone else. About business strategies I barely understood but loved listening to because of the way his voice changed when he got passionate.
Sometimes we’d sit in silence on the phone, neither of us speaking, just breathing. And it wasn’t awkward. It was… grounding. Like knowing someone was there without needing proof.
With him, I didn’t filter myself.
There was no performance.
No calculated pauses.
No pretending to be cooler, smarter, softer.
I was just me.
And he liked that me.
It terrified me a little.
Maybe thirty percent.
But the remaining seventy percent?
It felt right.
Right in a way that didn’t feel rushed. It didn’t feel desperate. It didn’t feel like I was chasing something or being chased. It felt like something unfolding at the exact pace it was meant to.
And that’s when I realized something else.
For three years after Frank left, there wasn’t a single day my mind didn’t circle back to him. Not one.
Every morning, every night, every quiet space in between, my thoughts would wander to the memory of him walking away. I had begged God. Begged fate. Begged the universe to fix it. To bring him back. To undo whatever mistake I thought I had made.
I loved Frank in a way that felt pure and consuming.
And for three years, I carried that love like an open wound.
But ever since the summit.
Ever since Colton.
I hadn’t thought about Frank.
Not once.
It was like someone had gently erased the background noise that had been humming inside me for years. There was no ache. No longing. No flashbacks of what could have been.
Just… peace.
I lay in bed one night, staring at the ceiling, phone pressed against my ear as Colton talked about a project he was launching, and it hit me like a quiet revelation.
Maybe the universe had decided I had suffered enough.
Maybe all that love I poured into the wrong hands had circled back to me in a different form.
Maybe this was what it felt like when something was meant to stay.
Two nights before his trip, everything tilted again.
“I have to travel,” he said casually, but there was a softness underneath it. “Just for a few days.”
My chest tightened instantly. “Where?”
“Venice.”
Venice.
Of all places.
Romantic, floating, golden Venice. The kind of city that feels like it was built out of poetry and old promises.
“It’s a family thing,” he continued. “My parents, my sisters. It’s been planned for months.”
Family.
He had never spoken about them in detail before.
“I’ll introduce you to them soon,” he added quietly. “I want to.”
My heart nearly stopped.
Then he went quiet for a second.
“There’s something else,” he said.
I held my breath.
“I like you, Sophia.”
Just like that.
No theatrics. No dramatic build-up. Just simple, steady honesty.
“I’ve liked you since that first conversation at the summit,” he continued. “I tried to ignore it. That didn’t work.”
I laughed softly, nerves sparking through me.
“I like you too,” I admitted.
And saying it out loud felt like stepping off a ledge and realizing there was ground beneath me.
Everything was happening fast. I knew that. Part of me did mental math. Three weeks. That’s all it had been.
But with him, it didn’t feel reckless.
It felt aligned.
“When I get back,” he said, voice lowering, “I want to do this properly. I want to take you out. Officially. And I want to ask you to be my girlfriend.”
The word hung between us like something fragile and precious.
Girlfriend.
I swallowed, trying to steady the smile that was threatening to take over my entire face.
“Okay,” I whispered.
Emily, of course, had opinions.
“You’ve known him for three weeks,” she reminded me, pacing dramatically around her apartment.
“We’ve spoken for almost eighteen hours a day for three weeks,” I corrected gently.
She sighed, but her eyes were soft. “I’m skeptical. But I’m happy. You’re glowing.”
She wasn’t wrong.
When she asked if I’d told my parents, I shook my head. “Not yet. When he officially asks me. Then I will.”
I could already imagine their faces. My father pretending not to be impressed. My mother gasping dramatically. Tristan asking how exactly I managed to “bag the city’s most eligible bachelor.”
I smiled just thinking about it.
The morning he was leaving, he asked if I’d come to the airport.
“I’d like to see you before I go,” he said.
I paused.
I had work. That was true.
But if I told Emily I wanted to go, she would have cleared my schedule in seconds.
Still, something held me back.
The media followed him everywhere. Cameras. Headlines. Speculation.
I wasn’t ready to be photographed beside him. Not yet. Not before he had officially asked me to be his.
“I’ll see you when you get back,” I said instead.
He didn’t push.
We spoke on the phone as he drove to the airport. As he checked in. As he walked toward his gate.
When he finally boarded, I could faintly hear voices in the background.
A woman’s laughter.
A deeper male voice.
“You’re with them?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said warmly. “That’s my mom arguing about seat assignments.”
I smiled.
For a second, I thought I heard a younger female voice teasing him.
“That’s my sister,” he explained before I could ask. “I’ll call you when I land.”
And he did.
When he landed in Venice, the line crackled slightly.
“I’m here,” he said. “It’s beautiful.”
I could hear the faint echo of an airport announcement in Italian. The shuffle of footsteps. Another female voice calling his name in the distance.
“I should let you go,” I said softly. “You’re with your family.”
“Talk tomorrow?” he asked.
“Tomorrow,” I promised.
I fell asleep that night smiling.
The next morning, I woke up feeling lighter than I had in years.
Until Emily burst into my room without knocking.
“Sophia.”
Her voice was wrong.
Not teasing. Not playful.
Sharp.
I sat up immediately. “What?”
She didn’t speak.
She just held out her phone.
And I saw it.
The headline.
Colton Greene Engaged to Carmen Diego.
My vision blurred for a second.
“What?” I whispered.
Emily’s jaw was tight. “It’s everywhere. Business Insider. Page Six. Social feeds. They’re in Venice.”
Venice.
The romantic city.
Family trip.
I grabbed the phone from her hands.
There he was.
Colton.
Standing beside a woman I had never seen before.
Carmen Diego.
Tall. Elegant. Dark hair cascading perfectly over her shoulders. A diamond on her finger large enough to blind satellites.
They were smiling.
And the caption beneath the photo read:
Billionaire heir Colton Greene proposes to longtime partner Carmen Diego during private family celebration in Venice.
My heartbeat didn’t stutter.
It stopped.
Longtime partner.
Family celebration.
The room felt too small.
Too tight.
“This has to be wrong,” I breathed.
But the images kept loading.
Different angles.
Different headlines.
Same story.
Engaged.
My phone buzzed in my hand.
A new message.
From him.
My chest felt like it was splitting open as I stared at his name lighting up my screen.
Colton.
I didn’t open it.
Not yet.
Because suddenly, I didn’t know which version of my life was real.
The one where he told me he liked me.
Or the one where he was engaged to someone else in the most romantic city in the world.
And my finger hovered over the screen, trembling.
Not ready.
Not prepared.
Not sure which truth was about to unfold.
- Writer
