Beth sat on the edge of her bed in Oxford, knees drawn up, schoolbooks untouched beside her.
It had been three days.
Three days since she had seen it with her own eyes—Leon, his hand on Aglaya's cheek, his mouth on hers, their closeness lit not by shame or shock, but by familiarity. Intimacy. The kind that wasn't new.
She was seventeen, and she had trusted him. Trusted that behind the glamour, behind the soft hands and velvet voice and tragic flair, there was someone real. Someone who wouldn't forget.
She had left the ring on his piano bench. Quietly, precisely.
She didn't want to be the kind of girl who kept things that didn't belong to her anymore.
Beth didn't cry. Not much. She just felt… hollow. Not broken, exactly—just scraped out, like someone had taken a spoon and gently removed the soft parts.
She still visited Helena in London on weekends. Her mother's old friend was stable, sweet, and somehow wiser than anyone else. Helena never asked about Leon. She just held Beth's hand a little longer than usual.
Amanda knew something was wrong. So did Jefrey.
But Beth said she was tired. Said she was studying. Said it was nothing.
Jefrey didn't press.
He just sat beside her on the sofa once, as she quietly scrolled through her phone, the contact name "Leon" staring back at her, unread.
"You don't have to tell me anything," he said softly, "but if you want to talk, you know I'm here."
Beth didn't speak.
But she leaned into him slightly.
And that night, for the first time in three days, she slept.
It happened on a grey Saturday afternoon, in the Wilson family's living room in London. The weather mirrored the mood: static, leaden, brittle. Beth sat curled up on the corner of the couch, trying to appear more engrossed in her textbook than she was. Jefrey sat near her, silent, his arms crossed in a way that meant he was watching everything.
Chris, however, was pacing.
"You know," he began, his tone surprisingly cheerful for the moment, "I just think people are being a bit… dramatic. I mean, come on. You know Aglaya. That's just how she is. She's like this dramatic art film cousin—she kisses everyone, touches everyone. It doesn't mean Leon was—"
Amanda, seated on the floor with a cup of tea she hadn't touched, went stiff.
Chris kept going, oblivious. "And Leon… well, he's Leon. He's always been a little too emotional for his own good. And sure, he could've explained himself better, but—"
Amanda stood up so fast her tea spilled. "You asshole!" she snapped, her voice cracking.
Beth flinched.
Chris blinked, taken aback. "What? I didn't mean—"
But Amanda was already sweeping out of the room, her shoulders stiff with rage. The door slammed behind her.
Chris stood frozen for a second, red blooming high on his cheeks. "I didn't mean it like that," he muttered, looking helplessly at the door, then at Beth and Jefrey. "I was just trying to… make sense of it."
Beth didn't say anything.
Jefrey stared at him with an unreadable expression.
Chris scratched the back of his neck, sighed, and hurried after Amanda, calling out her name softly, like he already knew she wouldn't answer.
The room fell quiet again, the only sound the ticking of the old mantel clock.
Beth didn't look up from her book. But the page hadn't turned in fifteen minutes.
Beth's 18th birthday came quietly—no parties, no champagne, no grand gestures.
Just a hospital room and the four people who had, over the last months, become a fortress around her.
Helena's room was warm that day, glowing gently with the filtered afternoon light. Someone had placed a little vase of tulips on the windowsill—Amanda, probably. The soft beep of machines blended into the calm silence.
Beth sat beside Helena's bed, her hand resting lightly on the older woman's arm. Helena was dozing in and out, her breaths shallow but even.
Amanda brought a small cake, homemade and lopsided, with "18" candles that flickered gently before Chris clumsily lit them.
"Make a wish," Amanda said, her voice brighter than her eyes.
Beth hesitated for a moment, then leaned forward and blew them out. No speech. No dramatic wish.
Just a quiet exhale.
Jefrey handed her a small wrapped box. Inside was a necklace, simple and silver. It had been their mother's once—Beth recognized it immediately.
"I thought it should be yours now," he said gently.
Beth's voice caught, but she smiled. "Thank you."
Chris gave her a copy of The Fellowship of the Ring, annotated with his own commentary in the margins—quotes, jokes, random trivia. "You're legally an adult now, so I figured you deserved to understand the real core of adulthood."
"Which is?"
"Orlando Bloom's cheekbones in HD," he declared.
Amanda laughed, soft and real.
They stayed for hours, just the five of them. They talked about nothing important. Ate cake. Took turns reading aloud to Helena, who stirred occasionally, smiling faintly, murmuring thanks.
But one thing did not happen.
Leon never called.
Never texted.
Never said "happy birthday."
And Beth—who had once tried not to expect too much from anyone—felt it more sharply than she wanted to admit.
Because he had once promised she'd never be forgotten.
But by now, Leon, cousin of Aglaya—the queen of indifference, forgetfulness, and flirtation—had drifted back into the mist of his own life. There were premieres. Models. Interviews. The next glittering distraction.
Beth didn't speak about it. Didn't bring up his name.
But that night, as she lay awake in the narrow guest bed in Amanda's flat, she touched the silver necklace at her throat and thought:
I am eighteen. And I am finally old enough to stop believing people when they say they'll always remember.
It was early November. The sky outside was dark by 5 PM, and rain clung stubbornly to the windows of the Wilson flat. The television hummed in the background—Chris had claimed the remote for his usual half-hour of celebrity gossip, red carpet chaos, and commentary from hosts who never blinked.
And then it happened.
"Up next, highlights from Twilight City's long-awaited London premiere—" said the presenter with glossy teeth and a buttery voice. "Starring Leon Troy in his broodiest role yet."
Chris leaned forward instinctively, a half-eaten sandwich forgotten in his hand.
The footage rolled.
There was Leon.
In a sleek black tuxedo that fit like it was designed in a dream. His hair was tousled just the right amount, his expression cinematic even when still. He didn't wave. Just stared down cameras like they were made of glass.
And on his arm?
Bar.
Elegant, polished, statuesque in a gown that shimmered under every flash. She held his arm the way someone might hold the base of a trophy—not desperately, but with familiarity. Her other hand gave a lazy wave to the crowd, her seafoam eyes cool, distant.
They paused for photographs. Leon smiled faintly—one of those half-smiles that never quite reached his eyes. He said something into Bar's ear, and she laughed for the cameras.
Chris blinked.
Amanda had walked into the room just as the screen shifted to another couple. She caught the tail end of it, but not before the flashbulbs burned into her memory.
"That was Bar, wasn't it?" she asked quietly.
Chris didn't look at her. "Yeah."
Amanda frowned. "I thought they were over."
Chris shrugged, expression unreadable. "Guess not."
In the next room, Beth—who hadn't been watching—sat at the table, studying. But she heard the faint roar of the crowd, the presenter's words. She knew that voice. She knew the sound of that name being spoken with adoration.
She didn't ask what was on TV. She didn't need to.
She just turned another page. And tried not to think about a black velvet box once left on a piano bench.
The truth, as it often is with Leon Troy, was tangled.
He and Bar had an on-and-off relationship that had become almost a private tradition in the inner circles of fashion week and premiere parties. Over the last three years, they had broken up eight times. Neither of them could recall the order. Neither remembered who ended it first. And both could, with unnerving ease, fall right back into each other like the last parting never happened.
For Leon, it was about love, or at least the flickering feeling he often mistook for love. But mostly—if he was being honest with himself in those rare, sober moments between events—it was about hormones. It was about craving something physical to fill the void between scripts and countries and scenes. Bar was beautiful, familiar, and rarely said no. They didn't always talk. But they didn't have to.
For Bar, it was Leon—yes, Leon, the charming mess of contradictions she'd met at sixteen and kissed before she knew his middle name. But more than that, it was the headlines. The cameras. The spotlight that always followed him like a second shadow. With Leon, every entrance was red carpet-worthy. Every exit a rumor. Every moment in public, a transaction in currency she understood better than love: visibility.
They were never stable. They were never private. But they were each other's fallback.
When nothing else in their chaotic lives held still, they circled back.
Bar, because she wanted the cover story.
Leon, because he wanted to feel less alone.
And both, because bad habits die only when you stop feeding them glamour.
So when Leon needed a date to the Twilight City premiere—after Beth, after silence, after the ring on the piano—he didn't even think too hard.
He called Bar.
She said yes before he could finish the sentence.
"They're calling him the next Leonardo DiCaprio," Chris said, eyes still on the screen as footage from the Twilight City premiere replayed in slow motion—Leon's face, Bar's gown, the camera flashes like a silent hailstorm.
Amanda, across the room, slowly turned her head and glared at him. The kind of glare that said: choose your next words very, very carefully.
Chris, realizing instantly what he'd just walked into, tried to course-correct: "I mean—with, you know… almost as many Pussy Posse members. And, uh… a similar liking for supermodels."
Silence.
Amanda blinked. "Do you hear yourself?"
Chris looked sheepish. "I was just—just repeating what the media said."
Beth, seated near the window, didn't say anything. She didn't have to. Her silence was like fog: soft, still, but suffocating.
Jefrey muttered something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like, "Bloody hell," and went back to tidying the bookshelf—aggressively.
Amanda crossed her arms. "You know what, Chris? If you're going to keep defending a guy who ghosts, flirts with his cousin, forgets birthdays, and recycles girlfriends like a subscription magazine—maybe just… save it for your next rewatch of Elizabethtown."
Chris opened his mouth to respond, then shut it again. Thought about it. Sat down. And, finally, whispered:
"Fair."