Chapter 2

I packed quickly. He stood silently in the bedroom doorway, watching me.

For a fleeting moment, there was something in his eyes—maybe guilt, maybe regret for what he’d done.

But it didn’t matter to me anymore.

The Capitol Hill loft belonged to Leo. I’d only moved in a few months ago, still clinging to the hope of building a life together. I hadn’t even settled in before reality came crashing down like a brick to the skull.

I didn’t have much to take. I ordered an Uber and dragged my suitcase to the door. Without a word, I slammed it shut behind me.

It took me just one hour to leave Leo Kingston’s home. But it had taken me ten years to fall in love with him and prepare for a future together.

Ten years, all for a man who never truly saw me.

My face burned from where he’d slapped me. Tears slid silently down my cheeks in the back of the Uber.

The car pulled up to a 24-hour urgent care clinic. The doctor examined my face, gave me a tube of anti-inflammatory ointment, and told me to use it morning and night.

I thanked him numbly, paid the bill, and stepped back into the freezing night wind with my suitcase in tow.

It was just past midnight.

With trembling fingers, I called Chloe.

“Mia? What happened to you?”

She gasped when she saw me—my swollen cheek, my red-rimmed eyes.

“Where the hell is Leo? That bastard—”

I shook my head and motioned toward the car. She understood instantly, wordlessly helping me load my luggage into the trunk. We drove back to her Fremont apartment.

After a long, hot shower, I finally started to feel human again.

“He hit you over a damn snow globe?” Chloe exploded once I told her everything. Her temper flared fast and hot.

“Has he lost his mind? He actually laid hands on you?!”

“And he didn’t even believe you! God, what a self-righteous asshole!”

“We broke up,” I said quietly.

She froze.

“You… you’re serious?”

Everyone in our circle knew I’d been in love with Leo Kingston for ten years. We were finally engaged. No one expected me to walk away so easily.

Not even after he hit me.

“Have you really thought this through?” she asked softly, her fingers brushing my hair in a comforting gesture. “Mia, this isn’t just one year. It’s ten.”

Yes. Ten years.

“I have. But what does it matter?”

“To him, my ten years mean less than a damn crystal ball Olivia gave him.”

My chest ached, swollen with grief and shame.

I had loved Leo with everything I had. But it wasn’t enough.

Because I wasn’t Olivia.

I wasn’t the wild, radiant rose blooming in the center of the garden. I was just the weed growing unnoticed beside her.

“But Mia… marriage isn’t a game.” Chloe sighed and leaned her head on my shoulder.

“I’m not saying you shouldn’t leave him. I just don’t want you to regret it.”

I patted her hand, reassuring her.

I’d already made up my mind. The moment Leo’s palm landed on my face, the decision was made.

I kept replaying his words.

He said he only pitied me.

People don’t lie when they’re cornered. They tell the truth.

Over the years, his attitude had softened just enough to make me believe he cared.

But it was all an illusion.

I stayed at Chloe’s for a few days before finding a new apartment in Ballard. It wasn’t big, but it was warm, and it was mine.

I took a week off from my job at the downtown tech firm to settle in and catch my breath.

The swelling on my cheek had gone down after a few days of ointment. He hadn’t held back that night. That slap was real.

Leo had always been cool and detached, the picture-perfect tech heir—never showing too much emotion, even when it came to me. His affection was always distant, restrained.

I used to think that was just who he was.

Then he met Olivia at the University of Washington.

They competed together in business case competitions, worked side by side in the startup club. I was always the outsider, watching from the sidelines.

The more tenderly he looked at her, the colder I felt.

He wasn’t incapable of love. He just didn’t love me.

Still, I worked so hard to stay by his side.

He never once acknowledged me as his girlfriend in public. The engagement only happened because his family pushed for it.

His friends pitied me.

“You like me, right? Then let’s get engaged,” he’d said once, with a careless laugh that still echoed in my mind.

It sounded so casual. So condescending.

I knew about Olivia too. The straight-A golden girl he admired from afar. She never led him on, but she never shut the door either.

Before moving to London, she gave him that damn snow globe. And Leo took it as proof that she might’ve felt something after all—enough to dismiss everything I had done for him over ten years.

I still remember the night she left.

Leo, usually so composed, drank himself into a stupor. He called me, slurring, asking for help.

I found him outside his dorm, swaying on his feet. He looked me dead in the eyes and said:

“You’re a good person. But you’re not her.”

I forced a smile that looked more like a grimace. “No,” I whispered. “I’m not.”

I cried the whole night after that. So long and so hard the pillow was soaked through.

Now, standing in my tiny apartment, I looked around. It was quiet, bare, but safe. This was my home now.

My parents had died in a car crash when I was seventeen, leaving me a sizable trust fund. I had no siblings. No family.

So wherever I was—that was home.

Back then, I’d wanted to end it all. I climbed up to the rooftop of my high school, ready to jump.

But a boy pulled me back.

“If you have the courage to die,” he said, “then use it to live.”

“Live for yourself. Live for your parents.”

I stayed.

That boy was Leo.

He walked with me through the darkest days of my life. Back then, he was a spark in my gray world.

He said saving me was nothing. That he would’ve done it for anyone.

But I chose to believe it meant something.

I chased him for years. Three days after Olivia moved to London, he finally agreed to date me.

We both knew what that meant.

I thought if I gave it time, if I loved him enough, he’d eventually turn his gaze to me.

But now, I was nothing.

Not his fiancée.

Not even a second choice.

Just a woman who finally realized she’d been loving a ghost.