Chapter 8
The Paris light was supposed to be different.
Soft. Romantic. The kind that made broken things look poetic.
But on the third morning, when the sun bled through the narrow attic skylight of the tiny Montmartre apartment Renee had rented in a panic, it felt less like hope and more like interrogation. Every dusty beam of gold seemed to illuminate another piece of the life she’d tried to outrun.
Her suitcase lay half-unzipped on the floor, clothes spilling out like a confession. A half-eaten croissant sat on the table, stale now—just like the fantasy she’d boarded the plane with. The fantasy where distance was enough to stop the hurt. The fantasy where Paris, of all places, would magically fix her.
She pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes until colors burst behind them.
Three days.
Three entire days, and she still hadn’t done a single Parisian thing she’d imagined.
No café terraces with little silver spoons clinking against porcelain.
No wandering through art galleries pretending she belonged.
No midnight walks across the Seine pretending she wasn’t falling apart.
She hadn’t left the attic except to buy bread.
Outside, the city breathed—a low hum of scooters, church bells, and strangers in hurried conversation. Life was happening on the other side of her thin wooden door. Meanwhile, Renee felt suspended in a place between exhaustion and denial, floating in the quiet like a ghost who didn’t know where she’d died.
Her phone buzzed again.
She didn’t pick it up. She didn’t have to.
She knew the message wasn’t from Owen. He hadn’t called once.
Instead, it would be reminders from the gallery back home, from the exhibition team she’d abandoned after the disaster, from the curator who was probably still replaying Julian Croft’s scathing critique in his mind.
Disappointment had followed her across the ocean.
Paris had only magnified it.
She lowered her hand and stared at the cracked paint on the attic wall.
“This wasn’t supposed to be like this…” she whispered, voice thin and tired.
She’d run to Paris to reinvent herself.
To breathe again.
To stop feeling like everything she touched fell apart.
But here, miles away from everyone who had hurt her, the truth pressed down harder than the low-slanted ceiling above her bed.
You can’t outrun what’s inside you.
A gust of wind rattled the skylight. The world outside kept moving.
Renee didn’t.
Somewhere deep in her chest, something small and terrified twisted.
She wasn’t lost in Paris.
Paris was the place she’d finally stopped pretending she wasn’t lost.