The night was cruelly quiet.
No rain this time.
Just silence.
And silence was louder than any storm.
Rylan sat on the floor of his penthouse, back against the wall, knees pulled to his chest like a child who had just lost everything. The lights were off. The city glittered outside his window like it had no idea a man inside was slowly falling apart.
His hands trembled as he held her bracelet — the silver one Ava had once left in his car. It still smelled faintly like her vanilla perfume. He pressed it to his lips and closed his eyes.
And for a moment… he pretended she was still his.
But pretending was all he ever really had.
His chest ached. A physical, brutal pain that refused to dull.
She was with Damien now.
And Rylan — Rylan was just… the one who stayed behind. The one who tried. The one who loved too much and got nothing back.
He had spent months hoping.
Fighting.
Holding on to moments that barely belonged to him.
Smiling while bleeding.
Loving while breaking.
And tonight… there was nothing left to hold onto.
A sob escaped him.
And then another.
And then he couldn't stop.
He pressed his forehead to the cold floor, fists clenched tight, his voice cracking into the empty room like a wounded animal:
"Why wasn't I enough?"
"Why couldn't she just love me back?"
"What was I missing?"
He cried like no one was watching — because no one ever did. No one saw how hard he loved. No one saw how quietly he gave her everything.
The tears blurred his vision, soaking the bracelet in his hands.
And then, through gritted teeth, came the words he'd been too afraid to say out loud:
"Sometimes it hurts more to love someone who doesn't hate you — but just… doesn't choose you."
He sat there for hours. His voice hoarse. His chest tight.
And then, as dawn began bleeding into the sky, Rylan whispered the final words — the ones that shattered him more than anything else he'd ever spoken:
"I would've waited forever for you, Ava… even if forever meant watching you fall for someone else every day."
His lips quivered.
"But maybe the real tragedy isn't that you left. It's that I stayed… long after you were already gone."
He let out one last broken sound — a gasp of grief, of surrender.
And then…
He placed the bracelet gently on his nightstand.
Not out of anger.
But out of love.
The kind of love that lets go, even when it's the last thing you want to do.
He didn't sleep that night.
He just stared at the ceiling. Eyes hollow. Chest quiet.
And for the first time, Rylan — the unshakable, untouchable billionaire — truly, completely shattered.