Anna's second regression, Alpha regrets it

Chapter 2 — The Gallery Aftermath & Lina

Rian walked me to the coat check like a man who’d rehearsed the route a dozen times and still found it unfamiliar. The city air hit us when the doors opened, sharp and clean, and for a moment the night felt like a promise rather than a ledger.

“You disappeared,” he said, voice low enough that the word felt private. “I thought—” He stopped, as if the sentence might betray him.

“You thought what?” I asked, letting the question hang between us like a dare.

“That you’d come back when I was ready,” he admitted. “When I had the time, the space, the—” He searched for the word and landed on something softer. “When I had the life I wanted to offer.”

“You offered a future that required me to wait,” I said. “Waiting is a thing people do when they don’t know how to choose.”

He flinched like I’d named a fault he’d been trying to ignore. “I know,” he said. “I know I hurt you.”

The apology was small and honest. It landed differently than the grand gestures I’d imagined. It was a beginning, not a pardon. I let him see that I heard him without letting him off the hook.

“Maybe,” I said, “you’re learning how to regret properly.”

He smiled, a little rueful, and for the first time I felt the delicious power of being the one who decided whether to let him in. I didn’t say yes. I didn’t say no. I let the possibility sit between us like a charged object.

When I texted Lina later—You will not believe who I ran into—her reply was immediate: Rian? Tell me everything. Also, bring wine.

Lina arrived with a bottle and a grin that said she’d been waiting for this story like a dessert. She was my co-conspirator, the friend who kept me honest and pushed me to play. She sat on my couch and listened as I recounted the gallery, the way Rian had looked at me, the way his apology had been small and real.

“You should make him work for it,” she said, eyes glittering. “Make him prove he’s not the same man who left.”

“I don’t want to punish him,” I said. “I want to see if he’s learned to be present.”

“Same thing,” she said, and then softer: “But also, Anna—have fun. You’re twenty-five again. Use it.”

The words landed like a dare. Use it. The phrase felt delicious and dangerous. I thought about the way my body had felt in the gallery—lighter, more curious, less burdened by the ledger of past hurts. I thought about the power of anonymity, of being seen without the weight of history. It was intoxicating.

“Promise me one thing,” Lina said, leaning forward. “No shrinking. No smoothing. If he wants you, he has to want all of you—the woman who remembers and the woman who’s learning to play.”

I promised. The promise felt like a vow to myself more than to her. I had spent years learning how to make myself small so others could feel big. Waking up younger had given me a second chance to rewrite the rules.

That night I lay awake cataloguing sensations like a scientist catalogues specimens: the thrill of being seen, the giddy power of anonymity, the delicious possibility of choosing not because I was lonely but because I wanted to. I thought about the rules I’d been taught—how to shrink, how to smooth edges, how to make yourself small so others could feel big. I thought about how different it felt to be the one setting the terms. Desire, I realized, was not a thing that happened to me. It was a language I could speak.

Before sleep took me, I drafted a list in my head: curiosity, boundaries, honesty. I would test the men who came back into my orbit. I would not be cruel. I would not be a prize. I would be a woman who chose.

And tomorrow, I decided, I would test another rule.