---- Chapter 29 No.29 Waking from the dream of forgiveness to the stark, lonely reality of the hospital room was a new kind of torture. The dream was a lie, and he knew it. But the truth was unbearable. In the quiet hum of the hospital, Chase finally accepted the inevitable. It was over. Not just his pursuit of her, but the entire Chapter of his life where he was the protagonist. He had been relegated to a footnote in her story. The only thing left to do was to let her go. Truly, finally let her go. He asked the nurse for a pen and paper. His hand was shaky, but he forced himself to write. He wrote and rewrote the note a dozen times. Grand pronouncements of love and regret felt false. In the end, he settled on something simple. Clare, | am sorry. For everything. | hope you find all the happiness you deserve. You have already found the peace you deserve, by getting away from me. | won't bother you again. | promise. ---- Chase He folded the note, but didn't send it. It wasn't for her. It was for him. An act of closure. The hospital discharged him a few days later. He flew back to New York. The city felt gray and hostile. His apartment was a mausoleum. He made one last trip back to California. He drove out to the arts center construction site. He didn't get out of the car. He just sat there, across the street, and watched the setting sun glint off the rising steel beams of the building. A monument to her new life. He thought of the words he couldn't write in the letter. | love you. | need you. He said them aloud in the empty car, the confession swallowed by the silence. Then he put the car in gear and drove away. He didn't look back. It was a silent, unobserved goodbye. A few days later, Clare was in her studio, unloading a new batch of clay. Her phone buzzed. An email from a generic address, no subject line. She almost deleted it as spam, but something made her open it. It was from him. A final, simple message. I'm sorry. | won't bother you again. She read it once, her expression unchanging. There was no ---- surge of emotion, no flicker of triumph or pity. It was just... information. The end of a story she had already finished reading. She pressed the delete button. The email vanished. She turned back to her work, the feel of the cool, solid clay in her hands grounding her in the present. The past was a ghost. And she no longer believed in ghosts.