The music faded the second I pushed through the service door.
Air hit colder here. Paint. Cement. Silence thick enough to taste.
My heels echoed too loud across the unfinished corridor, each step a reminder I didn’t belong here or anywhere. The smell of fresh varnish clung to the walls; the lights hummed weakly above. My pulse still throbbed from the sight of him downstairs, the othwr woman’s hand on his arm, the way he didn’t flinch, the way he looked like he owned the room and everything in it.
I pressed my back to the glass, breath ragged. My fingers tightened on the clutch until the metal edge bit my palm.
He doesn’t matter, I told myself. He’s not yours. He never was.
But the image burned anyway, and the ache it left behind wasn’t jealousy, it was humiliation—the kind that claws
