---- Chapter 5 | didn' t go back to my Queens apartment. Not right away. | needed to disappear, to breathe air that wasn' t tainted by Ethan and Isabella. My meager savings wouldn't last long, but it was enough. Enough for a bus ticket upstate, to a small, quiet town Noah had mentioned once, a place he' d grown up. It was a speck on the map, surrounded by forests and farms. A world away from the glittering cruelty of New York City. | rented a tiny room above a bakery, the scent of fresh bread a constant, comforting presence. | cut off all contact. Changed my number. Deleted my social media For the first few days, | just slept, the exhaustion of years finally catching up to me. Then, slowly, | started to emerge. | took a part-time job at a local diner, "Rosie' s." Flipping pancakes, pouring coffee, the simple rhythm of the work was soothing. ---- The regulars were friendly, curious but not prying. In the evenings, |' d sit by my small window, sketching. Not architectural designs, not yet. Just things | saw: the old maple tree outside, the way the light hit the dusty diner counter, the faces of the people | met. Slowly, painstakingly, | was rebuilding myself, one pencil stroke at a time. Back in New York, Ethan Cole was, apparently, not pleased. My mother, in one brief, carefully worded call to a payphone | used, told me he' d been... agitated "He called here, Mia. Asking for you. Sounded... strange." Strange how? | didn' t ask. | didn' t want to know. His initial unconcern about my departure had clearly worn off. The comfortable, controllable Mia was gone. The familiar emotional punching bag had vanished. He started making clumsy attempts to find me. His calls to my old number went unanswered. His emails bounced back. His relationship with Isabella, Mom hinted, was strained His obsession with my absence was apparently more ---- compelling than her presence. It wasn' t love he felt for me, | knew that. It was the frustration of a spoiled child who' d lost a favorite toy, one he could break and mend at will One crisp autumn afternoon, as | was leaving Rosie' s, | bumped into someone. Literally. Coffee went flying. "Oh, I' m so sorry!" | stammered, fumbling for napkins. "No worries, it' s... Mia?" | looked up. Dr. Noah Miller. The kind ER doctor from the gala. He looked different out of his suit, more relaxed in jeans and a flannel shirt. "Noah? What are you doing here?" "| moved back," he smiled, his eyes crinkling at the corners. "Got tired of the city hospital politics. Working at the regional hospital now. Grew up just outside town." Coincidence. Or maybe something else. We cleaned up the coffee, laughing a little. He asked if he could buy me another one, to make up for it. ---- We sat in the bakery downstairs from my room, talking for hours. He was easy to be around. Respectful, genuinely interested. He asked about my sketching, and | found myself showing him my worn notebook. He didn' t just glance; he looked. He saw the detail, the emotion. "You' re really talented, Mia," he said, his voice sincere. "You should be designing buildings, not just sketching them." His encouragement was a balm to my bruised confidence. A tentative friendship began. Walks in the woods, quiet dinners at Rosie' s, sharing stories. He never pushed, never pried into the darker corners of my past. He just... accepted me. But the past, as it often does, had a way of intruding Isabella, with her vast social network and relentless malice, wasn't content to let me disappear. She must have hired someone, dug around. An anonymous post appeared on a local upstate gossip blog. "NYC Socialite Wannabe Hiding Out Upstate After Scandal?" ---- It was a distorted, vicious version of the gala incident and the Hamptons party. It painted me as a desperate, social-climbing homewrecker who' d been publicly shamed for trying to steal another woman' s fiancé. The blog was obscure, but in a small town, news traveled fast. The whispers started. The sideways glances. The sudden chill in the air at Rosie' s. Old Mrs. Henderson, who usually saved me the last piece of apple pie, suddenly couldn' t meet my eye. | was devastated. Just when |' d started to feel safe, the shame came crashing back. Noah found me crying in my small room, the hateful blog post glowing on my laptop screen. He read it, his jaw tightening. "This is garbage, Mia. Lies." He didn't just offer sympathy. He took action. He had local connections, friends who were tech-savvy. They traced the IP address of the anonymous post. It led back to a shell account, but one with digital footprints pointing straight to a known associate of Isabella Vance. ---- Noah helped me get the posts taken down. He spoke to respected community members, the mayor, the pastor at the local church, people whose opinions mattered. He didn't share my story, not the painful details. He just vouched for my character, quietly, firmly. The tide of local opinion began to turn. The whispers faded. The warmth returned to Rosie' s. Noah Miller wasn' t just kind. He was a quiet storm of integrity. And he was on my side.