The Billionaire Who Waited While He Drowned

At two in the morning, Fiona Dudley stands outside Sybilla Henson's building and watches Ferris James hold another woman, confessing that being with Fiona felt like suffocating. Three years of a shared apartment, a red string tied around his wrist to stop his "sleepwalking," and every late-night disappearance suddenly point to one destination: Sybilla, his college crush and their mutual friend. Fiona leaves the keys under the doormat and walks out without looking back.

She cuts up the shirt she bought him, blocks his number, and moves into a one-bedroom near the office, throwing herself into work until she becomes the youngest department head. But Ferris keeps surfacing, drunk and thinner, begging her to come home and promising to cut Sybilla off. Fiona refuses, telling him that when he was catching his breath with Sybilla, he never once thought of her.

Yet alone at night, the old sweetness returns as knives in her chest, and she finds her wounds are only a thin scab that still bleeds at a touch.