Breaking Point

Amy's POV

I froze in the hallway, my body refusing to process what my eyes were seeing. The woman's red dress seemed to bleed across my vision, her fingers tangled in Mark's hair while Mark's hands—those same hands that had held mine across countless dinner tables—rested against her waist with the kind of casual intimacy that spoke of familiarity.

The sound of their kiss was soft, and somehow that tenderness made everything worse. This wasn't a drunken mistake or a moment of weakness. This was something that had been growing in the shadows while I'd been drowning in my own disasters.

They pulled apart slowly, Mark turning toward the elevator with relaxed ease, and then his gaze met mine. I watched the color drain from his face. The woman beside him caught sight of me, her expression shifting from satisfaction to startled embarrassment, and I felt a hysterical laugh bubbling up in my throat at the absurdity of it all—that she would be the one feeling uncomfortable, as if in this moment she were the intruder.

"Amy." Mark's voice held none of the warmth from the restaurant. Now he just sounded tired, impatient, like I was a problem he thought he'd already solved. "What are you doing here?"

The question hung between us, and I realized I had no answer. The roses I'd bought were probably still sitting on that restaurant table, wilting beside the ring I'd never gotten to give him, and here I was, chasing after a man who was already kissing someone else in his apartment building's hallway.

"Is this the real reason you broke up with me?" My voice came out with an eerie calm that felt borrowed from someone else's body. "Because of her?"

Mark's jaw tightened, and I saw him decide to stop pretending. "Yes," he said flatly. "Amy, we were over months ago. You just refused to see it."

The woman beside him dropped her hand from his arm, drawing my attention, and I took a proper look at her. She was younger than me—maybe twenty-six or twenty-seven—with the kind of effortless beauty that came from never having had to fight for anything. Her makeup was perfect, her dress expensive, and there were no visible bruises at her temples from being assaulted by debt collectors' representatives.

"How long?" I heard myself asking, though some part of my brain was screaming at me to stop, to turn around and leave with whatever dignity I had left. "How long have you been with her?"

Mark and the woman exchanged a glance, and she gave him a slight nod, as if giving him permission to answer. The gesture made me sick—they had developed an intimate shorthand that excluded me entirely.

"A month," Mark said, and the timeline hit me like ice water. A month ago, I'd been sitting in hospital waiting rooms, waiting for news about my parents after the accident. A month ago, I'd been fielding calls from creditors while trying to figure out how to keep the company afloat for one more week. A month ago, Mark had kissed me goodbye before his business trip, told me he loved me, promised we'd get through this together.

"A month," I repeated, and this time my voice cracked, the carefully constructed composure I'd been maintaining finally beginning to crumble. "You were already with her when my parents died. When I was trying to save the company. When I was—" I stopped, unable to articulate the betrayal that was slowly congealing in my chest.

"You were never there," Mark said, and now there was heat in his voice, a defensive anger that made him step forward, away from the woman in the red dress. "Even when you were physically present, Amy, your mind was somewhere else. You stopped talking to me, stopped asking for my input, stopped treating me like a partner. What was I supposed to do? Just watch while you shut me out?"

"I was trying to protect you," I said, and the words sounded pathetic even to my own ears. "I didn't want to burden you with—"

"Burden me with what? Your life?" Mark's laugh was harsh and bitter. "That's not how relationships work, Amy. You don't get to decide what I can handle. You don't get to shut me out and then act shocked when I find someone who actually wants to share her life with me."

The woman cleared her throat softly, and when Mark looked at her, his expression immediately softened. "Maybe I should go inside," she said quietly, her eyes darting between us, clearly uncomfortable. "You two should talk."

"No." Mark's hand caught hers, holding her in place with a possessiveness that made my chest ache. "Amy was just leaving. Right, Amy?"

The dismissiveness of it, the complete finality, left me breathless for a moment. This was it. Three years of my life ending not with the romantic proposal I'd imagined, not even with the painful but dignified conversation we'd had at the restaurant, but with me standing in a hallway while Mark held another woman's hand and told me to leave.

"You're right," I said, and my voice sounded distant, detached, like it was coming from somewhere far away. "I should go."

I turned toward the elevator, my movements mechanical, and behind me I heard Mark exhale—a sound of relief that made it perfectly clear how much he'd wanted this confrontation to end. The elevator doors opened immediately—a small mercy in a night full of cruelties—and I stepped inside, my fingers finding the lobby button with practiced ease.

As the doors began to close, I looked up one last time and saw them still standing there, Mark's arm already around her waist, pulling her close. They were both watching me, and in their matching expressions of pity and discomfort, I saw my own reflection: a woman left behind.

The elevator descended, and I slid down the cold metal wall until I was sitting on the floor, my knees pulled to my chest. The tears I'd been holding back finally came, silent and hot, streaming down my face and dripping onto my wrinkled suit jacket.

The elevator reached the lobby with a soft chime, and I forced myself to stand, wiping at my face with shaking hands and walking past the night doorman with my head up, though I could feel his concerned gaze following me out the door.

My company was bankrupt, my assets seized, my professional reputation destroyed. My ex-fiancé was upstairs with another woman, probably already in bed with her, probably relieved that I'd finally gotten the message and left them alone.

I pulled out my phone again, my finger hovering over Rose's contact information, but I couldn't make myself call her. What would I say? That she'd been right? That I'd run straight from her haven to the safe, normal relationship I'd been clinging to, only to find it had been dead for a month and I'd been too blind to notice?

A cold wind cut across the street, and I wrapped my arms around myself, suddenly aware of how exposed I was, standing on this corner in my wrinkled business attire with mascara probably running down my cheeks. I needed to find shelter, needed to figure out what to do next. But my body felt heavy and my mind foggy with exhaustion and shock, and all I could do was stand there, staring at the empty street, trying to remember what it felt like to have solid ground beneath my feet.

A car pulled up to the curb, its headlights cutting through the darkness, and I looked up instinctively, half-expecting a taxi even though I hadn't called one. But the vehicle that stopped in front of me was a sleek black sedan, expensive and understated, with tinted windows that reflected my haggard appearance back at me.

The driver's door opened, and Andrew Skin stepped out.