Chapter 2The Agony of Unspoken Goodbyes

I don’t know how long I stood there before I heard my own trembling voice answer.

“Okay.”

After hanging up, I realized I’d unconsciously walked to the entrance of an amusement park. To the base of the bungee tower.

This time, I bought a single ticket.

As the elevator ascended, I saw him again, the Preston from three years ago.

Before I met him, my life was a set of rigid rules laid out by my parents. I was taught to be rational, to live life on a razor’s edge. One wrong step meant failure.

My mother’s most frequent mantra was, “You enjoy a life of privilege others can only dream of. The price is that you must discard all unnecessary emotion.”

I wanted to rebel, but I knew I didn’t have the right. In our world, the moment you step out of line, you are replaced. I would become worthless, with nothing.

Preston was the first person who made me feel like I could take off my mask.

“Audrey, life is short,” he’d said, his eyes sparkling with mischief. “Why live it like you’re walking on eggshells?”

“Isn’t it better to just live in the moment?”

He helped me sneak past the bodyguards my parents had assigned to me and took me straight to the bungee platform.

In that heart-stopping moment of freefall, I clung to him, and for the first time in my life, I broke free from my gilded cage and screamed with abandon.

Preston was the beautiful, chaotic exception to my perfectly curated life. I loved the rebellion in his soul, his courage to love and hate so fiercely.

The elevator jolted, and I gripped the railing, my heart skipping a beat. The ghost of the man I loved flickered and blurred.

Just like the real man had.

He started changing six months ago. His predictable routine began to fray. Our lives, once intertwined, became parallel lines that never touched.

He’d come home after I was asleep. I’d leave for work before he woke up.

I tried asking his secretary, but she would just stammer about business dinners. But the cloying scent of cheap perfume on his shirts told a different story.

My upbringing made it impossible for me to cause a scene. I could only remind him calmly, “Be careful eating out so much. You might get sick.”

That was the first time he ever threw something in my presence. A bowl shattered at my feet, splattering hot soup across my ankle, raising a line of angry blisters.

“So the perfect little princess knows how to be passive-aggressive after all,” he sneered. “Tired of dropping hints? Why don’t you just investigate me if you want to know so badly?”

He knew me too well. He went straight for the kill.

He knew my breeding, my decorum, would never allow me to stoop to tracking his movements. I had to let it go.

Thinking back, I regret it. If I had intervened then, maybe we wouldn’t have ended up here.

“Ma’am? Is this your first time bungee jumping? The safety instructions are…”

A staff member’s voice pulled me from my thoughts.

I shook my head. “I know them all.”

He nodded and opened the gate.

I looked down at the vast emptiness below, my breathing quickening. My heart, which had been dormant for so long, began to pound.

In the moment of the fall, the wind whipped away the memory of Preston’s mocking voice, his condescending smile.

Our story began here.

It was only right that it end here, too.