The phone rang twice before Alicia picked up, her voice bright and a little distracted, background noise suggesting she was in the middle of doing something else entirely. "Hey," she said. "What's up?" Harry had rehearsed nothing, deliberately, wanting this to be as honest and unplanned as everything else he'd been practicing these past several weeks. Still, he'd expected to at least get the first sentence out before anything complicated the conversation. "I wanted to talk to you about something," he started. "In person, if you're free. There's something I need to be honest with you about." "Actually," Alicia said, something shifting in her tone, distraction giving way to a real, present concern, "can you come over? Matteo's been acting weird all week, really off, and he just texted asking if he could stop by tonight to talk about something. I don't know, I've got a bad feeling about it, and I could use a friend here when whatever this is happens." Harry felt the conversation he'

Alicia didn't call Harry. She thought about it, sitting alone in her apartment the morning after everything had fallen apart, her phone resting on the counter within easy reach. A year ago, maybe even a few months ago, reaching for him would have been automatic, an old, well worn instinct built from years of learning that Harry was the person who fixed things, who made problems smaller, who could be trusted to know exactly what to say to make the hurt more manageable. She let the phone sit untouched. Something about that realization surprised her more than she expected. She sat with her coffee going cold in front of her, turning the impulse over carefully, understanding that whatever had shifted in her over these past several months, it had shifted enough that reaching for Harry no longer felt like the obvious first move. She thought, instead, about who she'd been before any of this. Before Harry's money and Harry's careful, calculated attention had reshaped so much of what she be

Alicia opened the door and found Matteo standing there, his hands not quite steady, something in his expression that told her immediately something significant had happened since the night before. "You look terrible," she said, stepping back to let him in. "I feel terrible," he admitted, following her inside. "In a good way, I think. I'm not entirely sure yet." She gestured for him to sit, and settled into the chair across from him, arms crossed, watching him carefully. "Talk. And I need you to know upfront, I'm not going to just melt because you showed up looking wrecked. I have questions first." "Ask them. All of them." "Why now," she said. "Why tell me at all, after months of managing this. What actually changed?" Matteo considered the question seriously, choosing his words with obvious care. "I watched everyone around me choosing honesty this past month, even when it cost them everything. Harry, with Melissa. Rhiannon, with her sister. I kept telling myself I'd find the righ

Carmen found Harry in his study on a quiet afternoon, the kind of ordinary hour that made what she'd come to say feel almost strange in its lack of drama, and knocked softly on the open door."Got a minute?" she asked."Always." He set aside whatever he'd been reading and gestured to the chair across from his desk.She sat, feeling none of the anxious tightness she might have expected from herself even a year ago, facing a conversation like this one. Just a settled, quiet certainty about what she'd come to say."I wanted to talk to you about Pedro," she said. "And about us. About what I think needs to change."Harry's expression stayed open and unguarded, no defensiveness rising up, just genuine attention. "Okay. Tell me.""I've been seeing him again," Carmen said. "Slowly, carefully, over the past couple of weeks. And I think I want to actually try building something real with him. Which means I think I need to step back from whatever romantic dimension still exists between us."She

"I want to go first," Rhiannon said, before Harry had a chance to say anything at all. "I think I need to be the one to say this, not you."Harry nodded, settling back slightly, giving her the room she was asking for."I've been thinking about this for a while now," she said, her voice steady in a way that carried none of the guilt or fragility that had colored so much of who she'd been these past several months. "Since before Monalisa, actually. Since I started really building something with my music, something that's entirely mine, separate from anyone else's approval or attention.""Okay," Harry said quietly."I think I deserve to be chosen first by someone," Rhiannon continued, meeting his eyes directly. "Not shared. Not one piece of something larger. I spent so much of my life feeling like an afterthought, honestly, even before any of this started. My parents favoring Monalisa. Monalisa pushing me away for reasons I didn't understand until it was almost too late to understand the