When up-and-coming model Isabelle meets talented but jaded photographer Milo, sparks fly despite their age difference. Their romance becomes the talk of the New York City fashion scene, fueling rumors and speculation about their scandalous affair. A...
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Arizona had offered a brief sanctuary, a place to untangle the emotional knots of her spontaneous marriage and Milo's perplexing silence.
She landed in the late afternoon, the bustling energy of JFK a stark contrast to the quiet desert mornings. The familiar scent of exhaust fumes and ambition filled her lungs as she hailed a cab. She clutched her phone, the text message she had sent Milo earlier - still unread or, worse, deliberately ignored.
He hadn't responded to her previous attempts to contact him after she left Vegas, solidifying the finality of his silence, the utter disregard for her feelings.
The silence amplified her anger, turning her initial shock into a cold, hard determination.
The taxi pulled up to his penthouse, the familiar façade offering little comfort, she needed to focus. She unlocked the front door, the silence inside the apartment almost as heavy as the unaddressed issues with Milo. As she rode the elevator up, the surreal feeling returned, a mix of out of body and profound self-awareness.
When the elevator doors opened, Milo appeared from a back room, seemingly unperturbed, dressed casually as always. He paused, catching her eye. The usual smirk, but something in his deeply unsettling turquoise eyes was different now – a flicker of something she couldn't quite decipher.
"Isabelle," he said, his voice level, devoid of the familiar warmth that once sent shivers down her spine.
"Milo," she replied, her voice steady despite the frantic beating of her heart. "We need to talk. About everything."
The silence that followed was thick with unspoken accusations and unresolved emotions. She was here to annull a wedding she barely remembered, to demand her belongings back, and, in a way, to reclaim the pieces of herself he had inadvertently scattered across Las Vegas and the very public billboards of New York. It was time for her to find her voice again, even if it meant shattering the fragile remnants of what they once had.
Isabelle walked further into the room, her gaze sweeping over the familiar, minimalist decor – the sprawling leather couch, the framed photographs that now felt like relics of a different life. Each item was a silent testament to the intimacy they had shared, now tainted by the hasty commitment and crushing betrayal.
She stopped a few feet from him, her resolve hardened by days spent in Arizona grappling with the constant, painful reminder of the breakdown. She dind't know how it happned, but it did. Suddenly, all at once.
Las Vegas. The annulment. Her belongings. And the campaign.
"We need to talk," she said, "about everything.
————————
He saw her then, standing in his living room, a stark figure against the Manhattan skyline. His assistant, Tracy, a blur of polite surprise, had let her in. Isabelle. Here. He hadn't expected her to show up so soon, though a part of him, the more irrational, hopeful part he rarely acknowledged, had been waiting. He hadn't responded to her texts since Vegas; his "Okay" to her leaving had been a detached, almost automatic response. It was his natural instinct to pull back when things happened quickly, a defense mechanism born from scars, old wounds that had yet to fully heal.
