Chapter 57

Tiffany’s POV

The silence in my university office was heavy, thick with the knowledge of everything unsaid. Avery stood by my desk, her eyes piercing into mine with an intensity that made my throat tighten until I could barely swallow.

Her presence filled the small room, a tangible force, even though she was not speaking yet. She shifted, folding her arms across her chest to anchor herself against a rising current, before breaking the tension.

“What happened?” she asked, though the urgency in her tone was unmistakable. “Why didn’t you text me back last night?”

Her voice was steady, controlled, yet I could hear the tremor of distress. She was not just asking why I did not reply—she was asking if something fundamental had changed, if the world we built had tilted and if something was catastrophically wrong.

I could not look at her. My eyes drifted to the stack of graded papers, to the window where cold sunlight filtered in, to anywhere that was not her anxious, questioning face.

My chest ached with the weight of the truth I held back. She stepped closer, dissolving the distance between us, her voice dropping, more intimate.

“Tiffany… what happened to you? You’re not like this. Not with me.”

The softness in her words, the faith in her tone, almost broke me. Almost.

Instead, I did the one thing I swore I never wanted to do. Something I had vowed never to say, because even thinking it felt like a betrayal.

I drew a sharp breath, my fingers curling into tight fists at my sides. “Avery,” I whispered, my voice raw, “we can’t do this.”

Her perfect brows knit together in a frown of confusion. She blinked at me, as though I had spoken in a language she did not understand.

“What do you mean we can’t do this? Yes, Tiffany—we won’t do this.”

She let out a relieved breath, as if reassuring herself of an accepted truth. “I already told my mom last night—I won’t say yes to her ridiculous idea of suitors. Not interested. Not in them.”

Her conviction, the untamed spark in her voice, made the next words harder to force out. My chest tightened until it felt constricted, and I forced myself to meet her eyes, though every nerve in my body screamed in protest against the cruelty of my own actions.

“I’m not talking about that,” I said, though my voice quivered despite my efforts.

The confusion on her face deepened, her lips parting as though the words had not registered, had not made sense. I clenched my fists tighter, my nails digging into my palms, drawing blood, and finally let the terrible truth spill out—the cruel, necessary lie I had decided upon after a night of waking torment.

“I’m saying… we can’t be together.”

Her head tilted, her eyes widening in disbelief, a shock washing over her features like a sudden, freezing storm. She froze, staring at me, searching my face with intensity for even the sign that I was lying, that this was some misguided test.

“What?” she breathed, the single word hollow.

I took a step forward, needing her to hear every word, needing her to understand the finality of my decision, even if it shattered both of us. “We can’t do this, Avery. You and me—we can’t. Because we’re not just two people. We’re professor and student. Do you understand what that means? This—everything that’s happened between us—it wasn’t supposed to happen. It was wrong.”

Her lips parted in shock, and then she did something I did not expect, something that twisted the dagger in my heart. She laughed.

A soft, incredulous, painful laugh slipped from her mouth, as though I had told her the worst, unbelievable joke in the world. “Well, that’s a very bad joke,” she said, shaking her head, trying to dismiss it. “And you know, Tiffany, you’re very bad at joking.”

The sound of her laughter, even short-lived and desperate, cut through me. It was not mocking—it was desperate, grasping for normalcy, trying to turn this nightmare into something it was not.

But I clenched my fingers, forcing the next words out before I lost my courage, before the truth of my love spilled out and ruined everything. My voice was sharper, forced, cold.

“No, Avery. I’m not joking at all.”

Her laughter died. The silence rushed back into the space between us, suffocating and thick as concrete.

I forced myself to go on, each word heavier, more damning, than the last. “I’m serious. And I expect the same understanding from you.”

Her eyes glistened, as if my words had struck her like a physical blow. She stared at me, searching again, uncertainty flickering in her gaze, her breathing quickening.

She searched my face, as though hoping to find cracks, some sign that I was not serious, that I was just being dramatic. But all she found was the wall I had forced up between us.

Finally, her lips trembled into a bitter, defiant smile. Her voice was soft, but steady, like forged steel beneath velvet.

“Well… if it’s not a joke, then it’s not reality either.”

My chest tightened, a muscle clenching deep inside. “Because I will make sure of it,” she continued, her voice rising with determination, the Von Carter fire blazing in her eyes.

Her eyes locked onto mine, unflinching, defiant. “If you think this is wrong, then you’re wrong. If you think some stupid title is enough to make me walk away from you, Tiffany, then you don’t know me at all.”

I froze, my breath caught in my throat. “No matter what, I won’t let you go because of this,” she said, her jaw tightening with resolve. “Not at all, Tiffany. Not now, not ever.”

The silence that followed her final words was deafening. I stood there, paralyzed, my heart pounding so loudly it drowned out every other sound in the room.

Her eyes lingered on mine for a long, burning moment, filled with a searing mix of profound hurt, fierce defiance, and stubborn love. Then, without another word, she turned.

She grabbed her bag from the chair, her movements swift, trembling with restrained emotion, and walked toward the office door. The click of the handle sounded like a gunshot in the charged room.

Just like that, she was gone. The air collapsed around me as the door shut, leaving a vacuum where her presence had been, and I sank into my chair, burying my face in my hands.

Every terrible word I had spoken echoed in my head, each one heavier than the last. I wanted to believe I had done the right thing—that I had protected her, protected both of us from Robin’s ruin.

But all I felt was the hollow, searing ache of loss. And the lingering, defiant echo of her voice, filled with fire and certainty, refusing to let me go.

The drive back home was a hazy, indistinct blur. My hands gripped the steering wheel, knuckles stark white, my vision swimming with hot, unshed tears.

The weight of what I had just done in my office—the brutal words I had forced between us—still burned deep in my chest like a wound I had inflicted on myself. By the time I walked through the front door, I felt hollow.

Mom was in the living room, sitting with a cup of tea, flipping through one of her recipe books. The very moment she looked up and saw me, her eyes narrowed.

She knew something was catastrophically wrong. A mother knows the language of distress.

“Tiffany,” she said, setting the book aside. Her gaze lingered on my face, reading every shadow and crack of my composure.

“What happened?” Her voice, gentle but unwavering, broke me.

I had walked in hoping to keep it all hidden, to bury the searing pain beneath silence and forced calmness, but the truth clawed its way out. “I told Avery…”

My throat tightened. The words came out broken, scattered, sharp shards of glass.

“I told Avery that I can’t do this, Mom.” Her brows furrowed, and her lips parted to speak, but before she could ask more, the tears burst free, uncontrollable and hot.

My voice cracked like glass under pressure. “I told her we can’t be together. That… that it’s wrong.”

Mom did not hesitate. She was up from her chair, her arms wrapping around me, pulling me close to her warmth and strength.

I collapsed into her embrace, burying my face deep into her shoulder as the sobs shook through my body. “It hurt so much, Mom. The way she looked at me… like I betrayed her. Like I tore everything apart with just a few, awful words.”

She stroked my hair, her voice calm but strong, an anchor in the storm of my grief. “Oh, Tiffany, my love. Shhh. I’ve got you. Let it out.”

I clutched at her, as though she were the only solid thing keeping me from sinking. The floodgates opened wide—every suppressed emotion, every ounce of sharp pain that I had held in front of Avery, poured out like a torrent into my mother’s patient arms.

“I didn’t want to do it,” I whispered between sobs. “But I had to, Mom. She deserves a future free of… of scandal, free of my mistakes. And us—what we are—it can’t happen. It shouldn’t have happened. But I can’t stop… I can’t stop loving her.”

Mom pulled back to look into my eyes. Hers shimmered with empathy, her hands warm as they cupped my cheeks.

“Tiffany,” she said, “your heart is not a mistake. Love is not a mistake. It’s the world around you that makes it complicated, not the truth inside you.”

Her words, so kind, only made me cry harder. My shoulders trembled, and I shook my head.

“But I can’t—” My voice cracked, breaking apart. “I can’t lose her, Mom. And yet, I can’t keep her either. Not like this. Not with everything stacked so ruthlessly against us.”

Mom’s embrace tightened again. She held me as though she could shield me from the storm raging inside my heart.

“I know, sweetheart. I know. Sometimes the world feels too cruel for hearts like yours. But you don’t have to carry it all alone. I’m here. I’ll always be here.”

I clung to her, drained and desperate for something solid to hold on to. Slowly, the sobs dulled into ragged breaths, though the sharp ache of loss remained.

When at last I pulled away, my face was blotchy, my eyes swollen. I muttered, in shame, “I can’t bear for Ethan to see me like this.”

Mom brushed a strand of hair from my forehead, kissing it. “Then go rest in your room, my love. I’ll take care of everything else. You need to lie down, let your heart breathe a little.”

I nodded faintly, too exhausted to resist. With a weak, futile attempt at a smile that did not reach my eyes, I whispered, “Thank you, Mom.”

She squeezed my hand before letting go, her gaze following me as I trudged toward the sanctuary of my room. Once inside, I shut the door, leaned against it for a heavy moment, and finally let myself collapse onto the bed.

The sheets smelled of lavender, a comforting scent, but nothing could fill the sudden, yawning hollow space Avery had left behind. I curled up on the lavender-scented sheets, clutching the pillow to my chest as though it were her, and whispered into the darkness, “I’m sorry, Avery. I’m so, so sorry.”

I sat curled on the edge of the bed, hugging my knees, long after the house had settled into the hum of late night. The lamp on my bedside table cast a small, tired pool of yellow light, and in that circle everything felt unbearably close: the stack of clothes I had not folded, the family photograph on the dresser, the laptop closed like a quiet, accusing eye.

Outside, somewhere in the dark, the night breathed its slow rhythm; inside, my own ragged breathing sounded loud. The idea that leaving was the only right thing came to me not as a dramatic thunderbolt but as a deep, insistent ache that filled my chest.

I turned the thought over like a heavy stone in my palm, and felt every sharp edge. If I stayed, Avery would fight.

She would fight how she always fought—head-on, fearless, and reckless if she had to be. She would pull down the chandeliers of her world with her bare hands before she let someone else decide her fate.

She would tear out the foundation of everything she had been raised to protect because she loved me. I knew that about her the way I knew the shape of my own hands.

I also knew what that kind of war would do to her: it would teach her to live only by ruins. The memory of Robin’s words came back in painful flashes—the way he had leaned forward, his smile like a cold blade, claiming he had been tracing my phone since Italy, boasting about recordings, relishing the idea of watching the Von Carters crumble.

He had the kind of malicious patience that chews at people until all that remained was consumable ruin. If any scandal broke, he would place the match in the tinderbox and watch it all burn.

He did not need to be quick. He only needed the correct moment.

If I truly loved Avery, then love had to mean more than simply clinging on. It had to mean stepping away when my presence risked everything she was built to carry.

I thought of her in the drawing room yesterday—her chin steady, her eyes leveled like a challenge—and how that same defiance, if turned into a battle, could break not just the air between her and her mother but the rigid scaffolding of her entire life. People who look like her do not often get second chances, not in that world.

Mistakes cost more than headlines; they cost legacies. I pictured the alternative, too—me staying.

We would become a scandal that would belong to cheap tabloids and ruthless boardrooms. Her name would be spoken in hushed, pitying meetings not with awe but with dismissive pity.

The heir she was grooming herself to be would become a simple cautionary tale. Would I be able to live with that outcome?

Could I ever forgive myself if the woman I loved stood forever in the ashes of her life because I refused to step away? The answer arrived with a terrible, absolute clarity: no.

“Do you really mean that?” Mom’s voice broke into my thoughts.

She had been awake; I had not heard her move, but she sat quietly on the edge of the doorway, her silhouette soft in the dim light. I had not meant to speak aloud, but the words had built themselves into a desperate murmur.

“Leaving… forever?” I turned slowly to face her, and for a moment I saw myself clearly as if in a windowpane—red-rimmed eyes, cheeks hollowed by the sleepless night.

“Not forever,” I said, because even in that resolution there was a stubborn part of me that refused to accept finality. “For now. Until the storm passes, until whatever poison he plans to spread loses its taste. If I disappear, maybe the headlines find someone else to chase. Maybe the family root survives.”

She crossed the room and sat beside me, folding her hands over mine like a warm amulet. “You’re protecting her with your absence,” she observed, not judgmental but stunned, as if the scale of the sacrifice had a weight she had not counted on.

“So you think she won’t just follow you.”

“I know her,” I insisted, the certainty deep in my voice. “And that’s precisely the problem. She won’t wait in the passive way you think. She’ll fight. She’ll bulldoze everything and everyone in her way. That would destroy her future. If I’m gone, there’s a chance she steers herself back into the life she’s meant to shape—eventually. Maybe she starts to rebuild her future in a way that doesn’t cost her absolutely everything. Or she finds someone who won’t ask her to trade her entire future for a love story that the world will strip bare.”

Mom’s mouth pressed into a thin line. “You’re punishing yourself for what could be their choice. You’re making yourself small so she can be big. That’s so like you, but not always right, my love.”

“I can’t live with the thought of her standing in the middle of a wreck I caused,” I whispered, the pain evident in every syllable. “This is my fault for loving her, and I have to own the fallout. If I stay, she will only have me to blame when it crumbles. If I go, at least she has a way back to herself.”

We sat in quiet silence for a while, the kind that does not need speech to communicate volumes. My mind sketched out the practicalities because action can be a temporary salve: passports, the safe where my mother kept all the important papers, hurried calls to an old friend who would help find a place to live abroad—somewhere quiet, where Ethan could run without the echo of headlines.

I listed names of possible schools he could attend. I imagined a life with simpler, smaller days: mornings that belonged only to cartoons and pancakes, afternoons spent in sunlit markets, nights when my son fell asleep without the echo of scandal pressing against the walls.

The image, strangely, steadied me. But beneath the practicality was that cruel, small voice that warned this was not an escape; it was exile.

I would be choosing loneliness to protect someone else’s legacy. The knowledge that I could willingly make such a choice felt like both power and treachery.

I was simultaneously proud and corrupted by the exact same act. “I’ll send the resignation tomorrow,” I said, watching my fingers braid and unbraid.

The thought of turning in my papers—of making official the thing that would sever me from the life Avery and I had begun to build—stung like a splash of cold water. “I’ll leave with you and Ethan in two days. It gives me time to arrange things… to do this cleanly.”

Mom squeezed my hand, and her eyes were old and tired with an understanding I did not deserve. “You’re not betraying yourself,” she said, her voice reassuring. “Sometimes love is a different kind of bravery. Not the dramatic sort—standing in squares and shouting—but the quieter courage to step away so another can have a chance.”

That settled into me, a small, burning thing. I thought of all the quiet moments between us that mattered—the way she reached for my hand when she thought no one was watching, the time she kissed my forehead in the farmhouse like she had secretly claimed me forever, the humor that threaded through our silences.

I thought of Avery laughing when she crouched down to tie Lily’s shoe, her patience with her like a practiced grace. Those memories made the decision all the more terrible.

I know she will love Ethan with the same enthusiasm because I have seen it in her eyes. Her dedication toward people she loves is unshakable.

To leave meant to walk away from the sunlight and warmth I had finally started to build. It meant accepting loneliness as a harsh penance.

The more I reflected, the clearer the calculus became. Robin was not simply a villain; he was an architect of slow ruin.

He had positioned himself with enough intent to make every private thing a public weapon. If I stood and fought him, it would be a war he would enjoy.

If I fled, I might starve, but at least I might save her from the funeral pyre of her reputation. “I want her to be free from me,” I told Mom later, the words falling like heavy stones into a wide, dark river.

“Not from love itself, but from the crushing consequence of loving me. If she chooses me later—if she wants to find me after the dust has settled—then let it be with clear eyes, not because she was forced into a devastating choice. I want her to be able to choose without a scoreboard of debts and titles and gossip weighing her down.”

“You’re planning her future in your absence,” Mom said, but there was a trace of admiration in her tone. “You believe in her enough to let her reign without you. That’s selfless, Tiffany. Just… be careful not to make yourself so small that you disappear entirely from your own life.”

Her words clung to me. Disappearing did not feel like bravery; it felt like cruelty in a different, quieter shape.

And yet, with my hands on the plan—resignation letter half-drafted, boxes mentally packed—I felt a desperate nobility. I wanted her to hate me if hate meant she was no longer waiting on a doorstep I could never keep her from.

Better hatred than hollow hope, better a closed door than a window forever cracked open. The night deepened, and blessed exhaustion finally rubbed its eyes against mine.

Before sleep dragged me under, I went through my memories of Avery like a sacred litany. Each one was a small altar: the farmhouse sofa where we had knelt and pledged soft, ridiculous promises; the way she had laughed when I teased her about her birthday; the sharp, tender moment when she had said “I love you” and the air between us had charged with electricity.

I asked myself, over and over, if any of that had been a sham. Of course not.

The truth of what we felt for one another was a stubborn, living, beautiful thing. The truth made the decision crueler, not easier.

I made a final list before I folded the lamp away: tasks for morning—finish the letter, check passport renewals, call the lawyer about visa timelines, speak to Erin about unofficial network checks to make sure Robin had not planted devices at home. Practicalities gave me a necessary purpose.

They kept me anchored to a tomorrow that would mean moving forward, not drifting aimlessly. Lying down, I whispered to the dark the vow I had been fashioning like armor: I will leave so she can keep her sky.

I will make myself the scapegoat if that spares her. I will be hated if that means she can live.

I will do this because loving her this much means I am willing to burn myself into quiet embers rather than set her world aflame. Sleep did not come.

When it finally did, it was shallow and dream-fractured—visions of Avery standing at windows framed by chandeliers, then of me on a distant beach with Ethan building sandcastles, then of both of us older, meeting by accidental chance in a bustling foreign market and smiling like strangers who once loved too much. I woke with the physical ache of what I was about to do lodged in my chest, the decision heavy and sure.

Morning brought a thin light through the curtains, and I sat up, letting the plan settle into me like armor that did not fit perfectly but would have to do. The thought that she might never forgive me hurt more than any insult Robin could ever throw.

But forgiveness was a luxury I could not afford to hope for. I had to choose the shelter of certainty over the romantic but ruinous false hope that we could both keep our names and our love intact.

Outside the window a single bird passed, indifferent and bright, and for a moment I envied its flight. I imagined watching it from a foreign balcony and thinking of home as a memory instead of a place that hurt.

That would be the cost. That would be the price I paid to keep her world from crumbling.

When at last I finalized the letter, I read it twice, each line a self-inflicted wound. I saved it, then closed the laptop.

The resignation would go tomorrow, after I had made a few essential calls and packed a few essential things, after I had given my mother a concrete plan that would make our departure less chaotic for Ethan. The last, cruel comfort was this: I was choosing to make myself the villain in her story in the desperate hope she would be given the chance to be the heroine of hers.

I lay back down and let the inevitability settle. It felt like grief for a life I had not lived yet.

It felt like love in a bitter, stubborn, necessary shape. Underneath it all, like a small, stubborn pulse of defiance, was the hope that one day—when the roar had died and the papers had yellowed—she would be free enough to find her way back to me on her own terms, not because she had been driven there by hate or by longing, but because she had chosen it with clean, unscarred hands.

Until then, I would build a life of quiet exile, and keep watch from afar.