I stopped answering Alden's texts.
Not dramatically—I didn't block him or disappear. I just let the messages sit there, blue and patient and unanswered, while I worked alone in the studio until two in the morning, draping fabric and unpicking seams and rebuilding the same jacket collar four different ways because my hands needed something to control.
He'd said he'd been paying attention for four years. Four years. The arithmetic of it made me nauseous. Four years ago I was still convinced that if I just loved Xander harder, better, more quietly, he would eventually look at me the way he looked at the memory of her.
Alden had watched me shrink myself. He'd watched me perform devotion like it was an audition. And he'd taken a photograph—kept it, carried it—of a version of me I didn't recognize, a woman who looked like she had dreams that belonged to her.
I didn't know how to be that woman. I didn't know if I'd ever been her, or if she was just another beautiful lie.
When Alden showed up at the studio Monday morning, I was ready. Professional. I had my armor on.
"Coffee," he said, setting the cup on my worktable.
"Thank you." I didn't look up from the muslin I was pinning. "The lighting tests came back clean. We're good for Friday."
"Logan."
I kept pinning. "I adjusted the shoot schedule. We'll start with the coats, move to—"
"Logan." His voice was quiet, and it stopped me. "Look at me."
I did. He was standing three feet away, his hands in his pockets, his expression careful and patient and unbearably kind.
"You don't have to do this," he said.
"Do what?"
"Perform distance." He tilted his head slightly. "I told you the truth. I'm not asking you to do anything with it. I just needed you to know you were seen."
My throat closed. "You saw someone who doesn't exist."
"No," Alden said. "I saw you. The version you didn't let anyone else see because you were too busy making yourself useful."
"You don't know me."
"Maybe not." He took one step closer. "But I'd like to."
I turned back to the dress form, my fingers shaking against the pins. "We should focus on the shoot."
He didn't argue. He just picked up his camera and went back to work.
But the space between us felt different now—charged and fragile, like something that could shatter or ignite depending on who moved first.
---
Priya met me for lunch at the Thai place on Atlantic, the one with the too-bright lighting and the best drunken noodles in Brooklyn. She took one look at my face and said: "You look like hell."
"Love you too."
"I'm serious." She leaned forward, her elbows on the table. "You're not sleeping. You're doing that thing where you try to control everything because you can't control how you feel."
I stabbed a piece of tofu. "I'm fine."
"You're really not." She paused, and something shifted in her expression—a hesitation that made my stomach drop. "I need to tell you something. And you're going to hate it."
I set my fork down. "What."
"I went by Xander's bar last night. Just to pick up that jacket I left there, I swear I wasn't—" She stopped. Started again. "Gemma was there. Behind the bar. Your bar. The one you designed. She was playing hostess, Logan. Laughing with customers, pouring drinks, wearing this—" Priya's jaw tightened. "She was wearing one of those vintage band tees Xander used to say was his whole aesthetic. The Strokes one. She looked like she lived there."
The restaurant noise receded. I heard my own heartbeat, slow and distant.
"Okay," I said.
"Okay?" Priya stared at me. "That's it? Logan, he replaced you. He literally just—"
"I know." And I did. I'd known it the moment I walked out, maybe even before. Xander didn't love people; he loved the infrastructure they built around him. Gemma was just the next contractor. "It doesn't matter."
"The hell it doesn't."
"No." I looked at her, and I felt something settle in my chest—not peace, not yet, but clarity. "It proves I was right. He didn't lose me and fall apart. He just found someone else to do the labor."
Priya reached across the table and gripped my hand. "You deserved so much better than him."
"I'm starting to believe that," I said.
And this time, I almost meant it.
---
Friday morning, Marcus called at seven a.m.
"The model canceled," he said without preamble. "Food poisoning. She's in the ER."
I sat up in bed, my heart already racing. "What?"
"I'm calling backups, but everyone's booked. It's fashion week, Logan. Everyone who's anyone is—"
"Find someone." My voice came out sharp, brittle. "Marcus, this shoot is my whole editorial feature. If I don't deliver—"
"I know. I'm on it."
He hung up. I stared at the ceiling and tried to remember how to breathe.
Two hours later, I was at the studio, surrounded by the clothes I'd spent three months making, and no one to wear them. Alden was setting up lights with his usual methodical calm, and I was pacing, my hands shaking, my chest tight with the particular panic of watching your one chance collapse in real time.
"Marcus can't find anyone," I said. "Everyone's booked or out of town or—"
"Logan." Alden looked up from the light meter. "You could do it."
I stopped. "What?"
"Model the collection yourself." He said it like it was obvious. "They're your designs. You know how they're supposed to move."
"No." The word came out too fast, too loud. "Alden, I can't—I'm not—"
"Not what?"
I gestured helplessly at myself. At my body, my face, all the parts of me I'd spent eight years believing weren't enough. "I'm not her. I'm not Gemma. I don't look like someone you put in front of a camera."
Alden set the light meter down. He crossed the studio and stopped in front of me, close enough that I had to look up to meet his eyes.
"You're right," he said quietly. "You don't look like her. You look like you. And that's better."
My breath caught. "You don't understand. I can't even look at myself in mirrors without—"
"Then don't look at the mirror." His voice was steady, certain. "Look at me. I'll show you what I see."
I stood there, shaking, on the edge of something that felt like free fall.
"I'll be safe with you?" I whispered.
"Always," Alden said.
And somehow, impossibly, I believed him.
