Camilla’s POV

The stray made it through the night, which meant I got to walk out of my own operating room feeling like a god instead of a failure — a trade I'd take over sleep any day of the week.

"Go home, Doc." Elise leaned against the reception desk, cradling a mug of coffee that had long gone cold, her scrub top wrinkled from the same fourteen hours mine was. "You've been on your feet since yesterday afternoon. The dog's stable, I've got the kennel, and you have a boyfriend to go celebrate with."

I glanced down at the cake box in my hands, and a smile crept up before I could stop it—chocolate hazelnut from the bakery two blocks over, Ryan's favorite. I'd been there the moment they unlocked the doors this morning. Because today wasn't just any day.

After three years of grinding, my boyfriend Ryan Lewis finally had a real sponsor. He was about to light up the ice.

"I didn't even have time to change. I must smell terrible," I said, tugging at the hem of my coat.

"You smell like a woman who just got her boyfriend a sponsorship deal half the league would kill for." Elise took the mug with her as she rounded the desk to unlock the front door for me. "And I'm telling you, once that first check clears, that man is going to propose. You've been together since college, Doc. You put him through every tryout, every training camp. He'd be insane not to."

"Elise."

"I'm just saying I look good in emerald green, in case there's a bridesmaid situation." She held the door, grinning. "Go. Be happy. You've earned it about six times over."

The drive across town took twenty minutes, and I spent all of them rehearsing how I'd tell Ryan — whether I'd lead with the signing bonus or the equipment clause, whether he'd pick me up and spin me around the way he had when the letter of intent came through.

I still had the passcode to his apartment, the one I'd been quietly covering the rent on since his lease started, because a player chasing a contract couldn't afford to look like he was struggling. The lock beeped and clicked, familiar as my own.

I got the door halfway open before I understood what I was looking at.

Ryan stood shirtless in the gray morning light of the living room. His shorts were half down, his cock buried inside another woman—a woman wearing my nightgown. The ivory silk one, the one that had lived in the second drawer of his nightstand since the day he bought it for me in Montreal.

The cake box slipped from my hands. It landed upside down on the hardwood with a dull, ugly sound, and only then did they finally notice me.

"Camilla." Ryan pulled away from her, not a flicker of remorse on his face—just that irritated look, like I'd become an inconvenience. "You could've texted first."

"I pay the rent here." My eyes burned, but my voice came out steady, steadier than I'd expected. "I didn't realize I needed an appointment."

The woman laughed—actually laughed—then casually adjusted her hem and settled onto the couch with her coffee, as if she were the one who lived here. Her carefully highlighted hair and manicured nails stood out in sharp relief—the kind of nails I hadn't bothered with since vet school—and she barely glanced my way.

"Okay, listen." Ryan raked a hand through his hair. "This was going to happen eventually, so let's just be adults about it. You and me—we've been over for a while, Camilla. You just didn't want to see it."

"Over." The word tasted like rust. "If we've been 'over' for a while, then you watched me spend three years getting you that sponsorship."

"See, that's the thing." He finally stepped away from her and faced me. "You keep saying you got me that sponsorship. They signed me, Camilla. My stats, my tape, my name. Nobody at that table asked about my girlfriend, the veterinarian."

His gaze dragged over me—the wrinkled coat, the sneaker with the bleach stain on the toe—and his mouth curled into something close to a sneer.

"Look at you. You showed up here smelling like kennel disinfectant and actually thought you could be a pro athlete's wife?"

I slapped him.

The slap cracked through the apartment, and for one second his mask dropped, and something ugly looked out at me. Then he laughed, went to the bedroom, and came back dragging the suitcase I kept in his closet. He threw it at my feet hard enough that it bounced.

"Take your stuff and get out. Should've done this months ago." He pulled his wallet off the counter, thumbed out a fold of bills, and tossed them at me. They fluttered down over the ruined cake like confetti. "For the rent. Since you're clearly going to be dramatic about money."

The woman on the couch was taking a selfie—or pretending to. I looked at the cash scattered across the floor, then at the man I'd loved since I was nineteen—standing there waiting to watch me fall apart—and whatever I'd once felt for him had gone completely cold.

Seven years, and when exactly had he turned into this? Or had he ever really loved me at all?

But standing there with the truth finally in front of me, the answers no longer seemed to matter.

I didn't pick up the money. I picked up the suitcase—because it was mine, and it was a good one—and I walked out without giving him the tears he was waiting for.

*

The clinic was empty when I got back, quiet except for the soft shuffle of the boarders in the kennel. I sat down at my desk — my grandfather's desk, in the building my grandfather built — and let myself cry.

I don't know how long I stayed like that. Eventually I washed my face at the break room sink, made a cup of tea I never drank, and opened my laptop.

If Ryan said we were done, if he insisted no one signed him because of me, then it was past time I stopped carrying his mess.

Ryan came from nothing, spent his days buried in training, and his family had neither the connections nor the money for a real agent—so naturally, every detail of his life, on and off the ice, had fallen to me, the ever-devoted girlfriend.

For three years, minus the title and the paycheck, I had been his agent.

I'd told myself it was all for love. Turns out his love wasn't worth a damn.

It took me forty minutes to undo everything. I copied the sponsor's office too, to avoid anything bouncing back on me.

Within the hour, his first text came through.

RYAN: What did you do??

RYAN: Sponsor says my rep withdrew and half my onboarding is frozen. Fix it. Now.

Then, a voicemail, two more texts, his spelling deteriorating as the panic set in.

RYAN: You're pathetic. You think this hurts me? You're nothing without me. Give it six months, and you and that dump of a clinic will be bankrupt.

I stared at that last message for a long time, then typed back:

CAMILLA: I guess we're about to find out who's nothing without who.

Then I blocked him. His number, his email, all of it—seven years unraveling with a few taps of little gray buttons, and the quiet that followed was cleaner than I'd expected.

I was still savoring that quiet when my phone screen lit up again, an email notification sliding into view.

I didn't even need to open it—just seeing the logo was enough to summon that formal, cold tone I already knew by heart.

Ms. Donovan:

On behalf of the Lockwood Group, please find attached our final revised offer for the parcel at 4 Hartwell Road—including the Donovan Animal Hospital building. The offer stands at 40% above appraised value and remains valid through the end of the quarter. We urge you to consider it seriously.

Lockwood Development Group, Acquisitions.

It wasn't the first time they'd come knocking.

The whole neighborhood had become prime real estate overnight once the new development project was announced, and this building happened to sit on the most valuable plot on the map.

Ryan had hinted more times than I could count that I should just take the deal—because that kind of money could bankroll his career properly, agent and all.

But I refused.

I would never sell my grandfather's legacy to a group of strangers. Least of all to people whose eyes held nothing but cold profit.

I looked around—at my grandfather's desk, at the framed license hanging beside mine, at the animals in the boarding area sleeping with such unguarded trust, at the building he'd poured thirty years of patience and sweat into—and then I typed my reply:

CAMILLA: Not selling. Never ever.

I didn't hesitate when I hit send, never imagining the storm that answer would bring down on me.