Chapter 2 - The Five-Year Silence
Five years is a long time to build a wall, but it is an even longer time to live behind one.
In the five years after I left New York, I did not change my name, but I changed everything else. I moved to Paris, taking a low-level assistant job at a prestigious interior architecture firm, working eighteen-hour days until my hands bled and my eyes burned from staring at blueprints. I didn't call my friends. I didn't check social media. I blocked Adrien, Sophia, and anyone who had ever stood in the overlapping circle of our shared lives.
My parents, devastated by the sudden cancellation of the wedding, had tried to mediate at first. “Adrien is miserable, Luna,” my mother had written in an email three months after the split. “He’s drinking. He says he made a terrible mistake. Sophia has moved to Chicago; they aren't together. Can’t you just talk to him?”
I had deleted the email. I had deleted my old email address entirely the next day.
Now, in the autumn of 2026, I was no longer the broken girl who had fled Manhattan with a bruised heart and a single suitcase. I was Luna Vance, the newly appointed Creative Director of Sterling-Vance Designs, a European firm opening its flagship office in New York.
I stood in the terminal of JFK Airport, waiting for my luggage. The air smelled of jet fuel, damp coats, and stale Cinnabon—the universal scent of arrival. I was wearing a tailored cream wool coat, my hair cut into a sharp, professional bob, and a pair of dark sunglasses resting on the bridge of my nose.
"Luna?"
The voice came from behind me, hesitant, raspy, and instantly recognizable.
My spine stiffened. The physical reaction was automatic, a primitive alarm system triggered by a ghost. I slowly turned around, pulling my sunglasses down to look over the rims.
Adrien Lou stood five feet away.
He was thirty-two now, but he looked older. The sharp, boyish charm that had once defined his face was gone, replaced by a weary hardness around his jaw and faint silver threads at his temples. He was wearing a dark business suit, but the tie was slightly askew, and he held a leather briefcase with white-knuckled intensity.
"It is you," he breathed, taking a step forward. His eyes searched my face as if looking for the girl he had lost. "I... I thought I was hallucinating. I saw you walk past the gate."
"Hello, Adrien," I said. My voice was calm, a perfect polished stone.
"You're back," he said, his voice trembling slightly. "How long have you been back? Why didn't you... why did you just disappear like that, Luna? Five years. No phone number, no address, nothing. You just vanished."
I looked at him, genuinely amused by the sheer audacity of his confusion. "I didn't vanish, Adrien. I left."
"But without a word!" he stepped closer, his voice rising, drawing the attention of a few travelers waiting by the baggage carousel. "You didn't give me a chance to explain. You didn't give us a chance to fix it. We were two weeks away from our wedding, Luna! You canceled the venue, you canceled the caterers, you left my ring on the kitchen counter, and you just... walked out of my life without saying goodbye."
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I let out a soft, genuine laugh. It was a beautiful, light sound, entirely devoid of bitterness.
"Adrien," I said, stepping up to the baggage carousel as my black leather suitcase slid down the metal ramp. I lifted it off the belt with one smooth, practiced motion. "I didn't think a goodbye was necessary. I assumed the woman in our bed had already said it for me."
