Sous Chef ( JAKE ).

I came to New York because I thought I could cook my way into a new life. I thought if I sharpened my knives enough, if I let the kitchen heat blister my hands, I could carve myself into someone unrecognizable from the girl I was. Howard restaurant, 22W, was chaos in stainless steel-heat and clang and motion so constant it began to feel like a heartbeat. You didn't just work there. You inhaled it. You sweated it out.

And then there was Jake.

Jake with his slow way of looking at you, like he'd already decided how the night would end. Jake who poured drinks like he was telling a secret, who knew everyone's damage but never revealed his own. He made me feel chosen, then discarded, sometimes in the same breath.

At first, I thought it was desire. That heady mix of exhaustion and adrenaline that makes every glance electric. But somewhere between the after-hours whiskey and the unspoken mornings, I realized it was something else-something that kept me hungry in all the wrong ways. He was a habit, a vice I dressed up as romance.

The city will tell you it loves you while it's grinding you down. Jake was like that too. And still, I kept coming back, the way you press a tongue to a cut-testing the pain, tasting the blood, trying to convince yourself it's worth it.