Chapter 8 - The Reclaim
The next three days passed in a blur of intense physical labor and ruthless organization.
During the day, I danced until my leg warmers were soaked with sweat and my toes were bruised purple. Julian didn't fire me—Richard Whitmore was arrogant, but he wasn't stupid enough to sabotage the company's major holiday production three weeks before opening night.
At night, I worked on rebuilding my life.
I canceled the movers I had hired for the penthouse move. Instead, I hired two college students with a pickup truck from Craigslist. On Wednesday evening, we moved my packed boxes out of the Armitage apartment and into a bright, airy studio loft on the third floor of an old brick warehouse in Pilsen—a neighborhood filled with artist studios, late-night bakeries, and vibrant street art.
The rent was seven hundred dollars cheaper than Armitage. The windows faced west, offering a stunning, unfiltered view of the sunset over the city skyline.
I unpacked my clothes, set up my modest iron bed frame, and arranged my ballet slippers on a wooden shelf near the door.
On Thursday evening, as I was hanging a small mirror in my new bathroom, my phone rang.
It was an unknown number.
I answered it. "Hello?"
"Grace."
It was Miles. His voice sounded hollow, slurred slightly, as if he had been drinking.
"Miles," I said, setting the hammer down on the counter. "How did you get this number? I blocked you."
"I called the company office," he rasped. "Grace... please. I'm at the penthouse. I'm sitting here looking at the flowers. They're dead, Grace. All eight hundred of them are dead."
"That's what happens to flowers when you don't take care of them, Miles," I said evenly.
"My father called me yesterday," Miles continued, his voice rising in desperation. "He was furious. He said you refused to come to the gala tomorrow. He said you threatened him!"
"I didn't threaten him, Miles. I just refused to participate in your family's theater."
"Grace, you don't understand!" Miles sounded panicked now—a spoiled child realizing his favorite toy had been permanently taken away. "If you don't come to the gala tomorrow night, my father is going to delay my promotion to senior vice president. He told me today that if I can't keep my personal life organized, he’s going to bring in an outside hire!"
I stood in my small, sunlit bathroom in Pilsen, listening to him whine about his corporate promotion, and felt a sudden, profound wave of pity for him.
He was thirty-one years old, living in a thirty-sixth-floor penthouse, wearing ten-thousand-dollar watches, and he was completely, utterly hollow. He had spent his entire life running from his father's shadow, using women as shields, costumes, and props to buy approval he would never receive.
"Miles," I said softly.
"Yes? Grace? Are you going to come?"
"No," I said quietly. "And I am going to give you one piece of advice, because despite everything, I loved you for three years."
Silence on the line.
"Stop trying to impress your father," I said. "You will never be enough for him, because he doesn't know how to love anyone. And stop using women to fix your life. Learn to stand on your own feet."
"Grace—"
"Goodbye, Miles."
I hung up the phone, removed the SIM card from my device, snapped it in half, and dropped the plastic pieces into the trash bin.
I walked over to the large West-facing window of my new loft. The sun was dipping below the horizon, painting the Chicago sky in brilliant shades of amber, violet, and deep gold.
May you like
For the first time in three years, I wasn't waiting for a text message. I wasn't checking a schedule to see if a wealthy man needed me to be his "emergency wife." I wasn't wearing a costume.
I was just Grace Parker. A dancer. A woman standing in her own home, looking at her own sky.
