Page 133 of My Big, Fat, Fake Billionaire Wedding

“I won’t be selling those,” I hear myself say, the words escaping before I can filter them through my Professional Business Wife persona.

Both men look at me, Mr. Hoffman with mild surprise and Gideon with... something I can’t quite read.

“I just mean—” I start, then stop, realizing I don’t actually owe an explanation. “They’re not for sale.” I give Gideon a sly look. “Besides, he’s already bought enough of my work.”

It’s meant to be a joke, but he looks more hurt than amused.

The meeting drags on for another half hour, each minute more excruciating than the last. By the time we finish, I’ve initialed away our future with the precision of a surgeon removing a tumor. Clean edges. Minimal scarring. Complete excision.

The drive back to the penthouse passes in strange silence. Gideon takes calls, his voice a soothing background hum of business terminology and decisive commands. I stare out the window, watching Manhattan scroll by in all its chaotic glory, wondering how I’ve gone from being so careful about not getting attached to sitting here feeling like my ribs are slowly being pried apart on the operating room table.

“You’re quiet,” Gideon observes as we ride the elevator up to the penthouse, his first direct comment to me since leaving the attorney’s office.

“Just processing,” I say, which isn’t exactly a lie. Iamprocessing... processing the fact that in less than thirty days, I’ll be back in my apartment alone, thisentire phase of my life relegated to an awkward anecdote I’ll probably never actually share with anyone.

What about Lucy? I’ll shut out even her?

“Hoffman can be... clinical,” Gideon offers, bringing me out of my head. “It’s why he’s good at what he does.”

I nod, not trusting myself to speak. The elevator doors slide open to reveal the penthouse,ourpenthouse, though not for much longer, and I head straight for my studio without another word.

I’m standing herein my usual spot by the window. The evening light filters through the penthouse glass, illuminating the floating dust particles like tiny stars in the temporary galaxy Gideon and I have created together. My hands are stained with cerulean blue and burnt sienna, and I’ve somehow managed to get a streak of red across my forearm and probably ruined a three-hundred-dollar silk blouse in the process. Classic Ava.

Still, the canvas in front of me is working out all too well.

And I know exactly why.

It’s because I’m thinking abouthim. About Gideon. About how are time is almost up. About what we had. About what we could have had. About so many things.

God, I’m such a cliché. The struggling artist distracted by thoughts of a man. My grandmother would’ve laughed at me, then handed me a fresh brush and told me to paint him out. I rub my temples, leaving what I’m sure is a lovely new smudgeof paint.

But here’s the thing that’s hitting me like a bucket of cold turpentine: I’ve been wrong about love. Like, fundamentally, embarrassingly wrong.

All this time, through my dad walking out, through my stepfather’s systematic campaign to crush my spirit one belittling comment at a time, through those exes who treated my art and me like their personal investment opportunity, I’ve been thinking love was about finding someone who wouldn’t hurt me. Someone who would “complete” me, as if I’m walking around with this Ava-shaped hole inside me that needs filling.

Insert eye roll here.

I bite my lower lip, fidgeting with my paintbrush. I can feel the heat rising in my cheeks. Lucy would be cackling if she could see me now, turning progressively redder as I stand here having an existential crisis in paint-splattered designer clothes.

But what if love isn’t about completion at all?

When Gideon hung my Parsons paintings throughout his penthouse, he didn’t see a commodity. He didn’t see dollar signs or a chance to mold me into some bankable art world darling. He sawme. The real me, hiding behind layers of paint and years of protective armor.

And here’s the really weird part: I saw him too. Not the powerful businessman, not the guy whose name makes gallery owners like Dean Wess practically salivate, not the frustratingly gorgeous man whose mere existence turns the sophisticated women of New York into giggling, hair-twirling teenagers. I saw the boy who was betrayed by a woman he loved, who built walls just as high as mine, who understands what it means to protect your heart at all costs.

It’s like... we’re both walking around with theseinvisible versions of ourselves that nobody else has bothered to notice, much less embrace. These fragile, uncertain, hopeful selves that we’ve been trying, and mostly failing, to love on our own.

I drop my brush into the turpentine with a splash, watching the colors bleed into the liquid. That’s it, isn’t it? Love isn’t someone swooping in to save you or complete you. It’s that rare, miraculous moment when someone sees your hidden self, the one you’ve been struggling to love alone, and says, “Hey, I see you. And you’re worth loving exactly as you are.”

And somehow, impossibly, you see their hidden self too.

“Well, shit,” I mutter to the empty studio as I process this revelation. “That changes everything.”

I turn back to my canvas, suddenly seeing exactly what I’ve created. Not just emotional chaos, but truth.Mytruth. The real me, unfiltered and unafraid.

The painting isn’t chaotic because I’m losing my mind (though that’s still up for debate). It’s chaotic because I’ve been holding back, still afraid of being truly seen. Still stuck in that mindset my stepfather drilled into me: that vulnerability equals weakness, that expression equals exposure.

But if Gideon can see me, and I mean reallyseeme, and still look at me with those eyes that make my blushing go into overdrive... maybe I can finally stop hiding.

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