Chapter 38. The Exit

She didn’t leave that day. Not physically.

Alyssa lingered in the gallery until the sun finally slipped behind the corrugated roofs of the old warehouse district, watching the golden shafts of light fade into violet, then into deep indigo, until all color drained away. The skylights overhead—once a promise of morning brilliance—turned the blank canvases ghostly under the gathering dark. She worked on long after dusk, her fingertips creased with the memory of paper, chalk dust smudged across her forearms like tattooed ash. A row of paintbrushes stood in a glass jar filled with cloudy water she’d forgotten to change, bristles sagging in their makeshift bath.

Still, she didn’t cry. She didn’t scream or rage against the walls she’d built with him. Instead, she moved through the space like someone finally exhaling a breath that had been held in her lungs since the day Max first spoke her name—softly, urgently, as if it were both promise and command. The only sound was her own