---- Chapter 23 No.23 Chase watched her walk away until she was just a small, distant figure. Then she was gone. He felt... nothing. A vast, echoing emptiness. The pain, the desperation, the hope-it had all been burned out of him by the cold fire of her final analysis. She hadn't just rejected him; she had dissected him, labeled him, and filed him away under "past mistakes." He sat on the bench for a long time, the world moving around him in a blur. He felt like a ghost, invisible to the joggers and laughing children. Eventually, he stood up and began the long, aimless walk back to his hotel. As he neared the entrance, a car pulled up to the curb. Ben got out of the driver's side. He opened the passenger door for Clare. They had clearly just come from somewhere. They were laughing. Ben handed her a small, potted succulent, a ridiculous-looking plant with chubby leaves. She took it, her scarred hands gentle on the ceramic pot, and her smile was the brightest thing Chase had ever seen. It was a smile he had never seen before. Not the adoring, placating smile she had given him. It was a smile of pure, unadulterated joy. ---- The sight of it, directed at another man, holding another man's gift, finally broke through his numbness. A hot, black wave of jealousy, so powerful it made him dizzy, washed over him. He wanted to storm over there, to smash the stupid plant, to wipe that smile off her face. But he was paralyzed. He could only stand there, hidden in the shadows of the building, and watch. Watch as Ben walked her to the door. Watch as she disappeared inside, taking her smile and her stupid plant with her. Chase was left alone on the sidewalk with his impotent fury. Clare, inside the house, felt the last vestiges of the encounter with Chase fall away. The brief, unpleasant memory was replaced by the warmth of her easy afternoon with Ben. She placed the small succulent on her windowsill. It was a strange, resilient little plant. A survivor. She liked it. A flicker of Chase's ravaged face crossed her mind. A part of her, the part that had been trained to care for him, felt a pang of something. Pity? Guilt? She quashed it immediately. That was his path to walk, his mess to clean up. She had her own. Her gaze drifted from the plant to the window, to the wide, blue expanse of the Pacific Ocean. She thought about her studio, about the feel of the clay under her hands. She thought about the new designs she wanted to try, the glazes ---- she wanted to experiment with. She thought about the future. And for the first time, the future wasn't a vague, terrifying concept. It was a bright, tangible thing, full of possibility. A future she would build with her own two hands. A future that was entirely, completely hers.