moira

Twelve months since she’d seen him shirtless by Max and Pietra’s pool. Twelve months since she’d spotted the intricate, fine-line tattoo—a crescent moon birthmark—on his left hip, the exact same mark that adorned her own skin in the exact same spot. Twelve months of carrying the weight of knowing the universe had played its cruelest joke on her: marking her for a man who looked at her like she was less than nothing, who spoke with barely concealed contempt, and who seemed to take genuine pleasure in making her feel small.

The irony was so perfect it was almost beautiful in its completeness. Almost.

Y/N pressed the buzzer for their apartment, her fingers trembling slightly despite the mild evening temperature. The familiar sound of Pietra's voice crackled through the intercom, warm and welcoming as always, a stark contrast to the ice-cold dread that had settled in Y/N's stomach the moment she'd received the text about tonight's gathering.

"Y/N! Come up, love. We're all here already."

All here already. Which meant he was already there. Which meant she would have to spend the next several hours pretending that her heart didn't shatter a little more each time he looked through her like she was invisible, each time he spoke to everyone else with warmth and charm while reserving nothing but cold politeness for her.

The elevator ride to the 16th floor felt like an eternity, giving Y/N too much time to study her reflection in the polished steel doors. She looked composed, professional, put-together—the image she'd carefully cultivated over years of learning to hide every vulnerable emotion behind a mask of competent indifference. Her long hair fell in soft waves past her shoulders, and her eyes held that particular intensity that came from years of analyzing every interaction, every micro-expression, every subtle shift in tone that might indicate incoming rejection or abandonment.

She'd chosen her outfit carefully tonight—high-waisted black trousers that accentuated the curve of her hips while maintaining an air of sophisticated professionalism, paired with a burgundy silk blouse that brought out the warmth in her skin tone. The outfit was expensive, impeccably tailored, designed to project success and confidence. It was armor, just like everything else in her carefully constructed life.

The elevator doors opened with a soft chime, and Y/N stepped into the familiar hallway. She could already hear voices and laughter from behind Max and Pietra's door—Tom's booming laugh, Ed's animated storytelling voice, Max's quick wit cutting through the conversation. And underneath it all, like a bass note that made her chest tight with unwanted longing, she could hear Lando's voice.

That voice that could go from playful teasing to cutting cruelty in the span of a heartbeat. That voice that spoke to everyone else with such natural charm and warmth, but turned cold and dismissive the moment it was directed at her. The voice that belonged to her soulmate, who would probably laugh if he ever discovered the cosmic joke the universe had played on both of them.

Y/N knocked on the door, forcing her shoulders back and lifting her chin with the practiced confidence that had gotten her through boardroom negotiations and university presentations and every other situation where she'd needed to project strength while feeling fundamentally broken inside.

Pietra opened the door with a bright smile, her warmth immediately filling the space between them. "Y/N! You look stunning as always. Come in, come in. We were just talking about Max's latest disaster in the kitchen."

Y/N stepped into the warm, inviting space of the apartment she'd visited so many times over the past year. The living room was exactly as she remembered—comfortable sofas arranged around a glass coffee table, warm lighting that made everything feel cozy and intimate, floor-to-ceiling windows that offered a stunning view of London's glittering skyline. 

"Y/N!" Max called out from his position on the main sofa, raising his wine glass in greeting. "Perfect timing. We were just about to start placing bets on whether Tom can get through the evening without spilling something on himself."

"Hey now," Tom protested from his spot. "That was one time, and it was entirely Lando's fault for making me laugh while I was drinking."

And there it was. The mention of his name that made Y/N's entire body tense despite her best efforts to remain composed. She forced a smile and accepted the glass of wine that Pietra pressed into her hands, using the moment of taking a sip to scan the room and locate him.

He was sitting in the armchair near the window, and the sight of him hit her like it always did—like a physical blow that left her breathless and aching. Lando Norris at twenty-five was devastating in a way that seemed almost unfair, as if the universe had decided to concentrate all its efforts on creating the most beautiful human being possible and then, just for the sake of cosmic humor, had made him her soulmate while ensuring he could barely stand to be in the same room as her.

His curly hair was slightly messy, as if he'd been running his hands through it—a nervous habit she'd noticed over the months of reluctant observation. His green eyes were bright with laughter from whatever conversation had been happening before her arrival, and she felt that familiar twist of pain in her chest as she watched him be charming and animated with everyone except her.

When his gaze finally found hers across the room, the transformation was immediate and devastating. The warmth and humor in his eyes vanished, replaced by that familiar cool indifference that had become as much a part of their interactions as breathing. He gave her the barest nod of acknowledgment—polite, distant, the kind of greeting you'd give to a stranger you had no interest in knowing better.

"Y/N," he said, and even her name sounded different in his mouth than it did when anyone else said it. Clipped. Formal. Devoid of any warmth or interest.

"Lando," she replied, matching his tone exactly, though it cost her everything to keep her voice steady and unaffected.

The others seemed oblivious to the sudden shift in atmosphere, continuing their conversation about Tom's coordination issues and Max's latest cooking disasters. Y/N settled onto the sofa next to Ed, positioning herself so she could participate in the group conversation while keeping Lando in her peripheral vision—a skill she'd developed over months of trying to understand why he treated her so differently from everyone else.

The evening progressed much like every other gathering over the past fourteen months. Lando was his usual charming self with everyone—teasing Max about his latest streaming failures, asking Tom about his new job, complimenting Pietra on the dinner she'd prepared. He laughed at Ed's terrible jokes, offered thoughtful responses to serious topics, and generally embodied the kind of warm, engaging personality that had made him beloved by millions of fans around the world.

With Y/N, he was unpredictable—but mostly unkind. Most days, he was rude in the way only someone who knew exactly how to hurt could be—sharp, dismissive, and laced with quiet contempt. Other times, depending on his mood, the location, or even the time of day, he’d shift without warning—offering a polite nod, a short answer, or, worst of all, nothing at all. He'd ignore her completely, as though she were invisible. On the rare occasions he was civil, it wasn’t kindness—it was cold, calculated detachment. He answered direct questions with minimal effort, never initiated conversation, and kept a distance so deliberate it stung more than open cruelty. Hostility, at least, would have meant she mattered. This—this inconsistency, this indifference—felt like the slowest form of erasure.

Y/N participated in the group conversations with her usual intelligence and dry wit, making observations that made the others laugh, sharing stories from her work that showcased her sharp analytical mind. She was good at this—had always been good at performing normalcy even when everything inside her was screaming. It was a skill learned in childhood, perfected through years of practice in situations where showing weakness meant inviting more pain.

But tonight felt different somehow. Maybe it was the wine, or maybe it was the accumulation of twelve months of carrying the weight of their cosmic connection while being treated like a barely tolerated acquaintance. Maybe it was the way she'd caught him looking at her when he thought she wasn't paying attention—not with indifference, but with something that looked almost like hunger before he quickly looked away.

Whatever it was, when the conversation inevitably turned to relationships, Y/N felt that familiar coil of tension in her stomach begin to tighten.

"I just don't understand it," Lando was saying, running those long fingers through his curls in a gesture that made Y/N's stomach clench with unwanted longing. She watched the way his forearms flexed as he moved, the subtle play of muscle beneath golden skin, the way his hands—those beautiful, capable hands she'd seen grip steering wheels and sign autographs and gesture animatedly during conversations—moved with unconscious grace.

"Where are all the good girls these days? The ones who actually have their shit together. Someone mature, intelligent, who knows what they want in life."

The words hit Y/N like physical blows, each one more devastating than the last. Something hot and bitter rose in her throat—a mixture of fury and heartbreak that threatened to choke her. Here he was, describing exactly what she was.

Mature. Intelligent. Someone who knows what they want.

She was all of those things—had two degrees, spoke four languages fluently, could analyze market trends and debate European history with the best of them. But sitting here, listening to him describe his perfect woman while looking right through her like she didn’t exist, felt like being slowly skinned alive.

The soulmate mark on her hip burned like acid under her skin, a constant reminder of the cosmic joke that was her existence. Somewhere in the universe's grand design, she was supposed to be his everything. His perfect match, his other half, his completion. Instead, she was his invisible annoyance, his least favorite person in any room.

"I mean, I want something real," Lando continued, his voice gaining that passionate intensity that appeared whenever he talked about something that mattered to him. "Someone who challenges me, who doesn't just want me for fame or the money. A proper relationship, marriage material. Someone I could actually see myself building a life with."

Y/N's fingers tightened on her wine glass until her knuckles went white. Marriage material. Someone who challenges him. The universe had literally designed her to be those things for him, had marked them both before birth as perfect matches, and he was sitting there describing her while simultaneously treating her like she was invisible.

Max snorted from his position next to Pietra, his arm draped casually around his girlfriend's shoulders. "Mate, maybe you're looking in the wrong places."

"That's just it, though," Lando said, leaning forward in his chair, those green eyes filled with frustration. "I don't even know where to look anymore. Everyone seems so superficial, so focused on the lifestyle rather than actually building something meaningful."

Marriage material. Someone who challenges him. Someone mature and intelligent.

The irony was so perfectly cruel, she could barely breathe. The hypocrisy was so staggering it made something snap inside Y/N’s chest. A laugh escaped before she could stop it—bitter, sharp, slicing through the room like broken glass.

The sound made everyone turn to look at her, but she only had eyes for Lando—whose gaze had sharpened with something dangerously close to irritation.

"Something funny?" His tone was already defensive, already hostile. The way it always was when he spoke to her, like her very existence offended him on some fundamental level.

Y/N set her wine glass down on the coffee table with careful precision, her movements controlled despite the storm raging inside her chest. "It's just..." she began. "The hypocrisy is rather amusing, don't you think?"

"Hypocrisy?" Lando's voice was getting colder, more defensive. The atmosphere in the room shifted palpably, the easy warmth of moments before replaced by a tension that made everyone else fall silent.

"You sitting there, complaining about not being able to find a good woman, a mature woman, while you're still..."

"While I'm still what?" Lando interrupted, leaning forward in his chair. His eyes were full of anger now, all pretense of polite indifference abandoned.

"You're sitting here complaining about not being able to find a good girl, a mature woman who knows what she wants," she said, her voice steady as stone. "But how exactly do you expect to attract someone like that when you're still hung up on your ex-girlfriend?"

The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees. Pietra shifted uncomfortably, her usually warm demeanor cooling as she sensed the brewing storm. Tom cleared his throat awkwardly while Ed suddenly found his glass fascinating.

Lando's entire body went rigid, every muscle tensing like a predator preparing to strike. "I'm not hung up on anyone," he said, but there was something too sharp in his voice, too quick in his denial.

"Really?" Y/N's voice was silk over steel, deceptively soft but deadly. "Because your Instagram says otherwise. Your family's Instagram says otherwise. Hell, every tabloid article about you and your little PR puppet says otherwise."

The words hung in the air like a challenge, and Y/N watched Lando's face cycle through several emotions—surprise, anger, and something that might have been shame before it was quickly masked by fury.

"You've been stalking my Instagram?" The accusation came out sharp and ugly, designed to put her on the defensive, to shift the blame, to cast her as the villain in this scenario. It was a tactic she recognized from childhood, from parents who turned every legitimate grievance into proof of her own moral failings.

But Y/N had been fighting battles since she was five years old, and had learned to weaponize words before most children could even tie their shoes. She didn’t flinch, didn’t back down, didn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing her rattled.

"It's called having functional eyesight, Lando. Every time you and Matilde take your pathetic little PR strolls around Monaco—which, by the way, everyone can see right through—the articles always include screenshots. Screenshots of you still following your ex girlfriend, Olivia. Of your mother still commenting heart emojis on her posts. Of your father still liking her pictures from vacations she takes with her new boyfriend."

Each word was delivered with surgical precision, designed to cut deep. Y/N watched Lando’s face flush red, his hands clenching into fists on the armrests of his chair. Those beautiful forearms were tense with barely contained rage, veins standing out against his tanned skin, knuckles turning white from the force of his grip.

Even in anger—even as she systematically destroyed him with words—she couldn’t help but notice how beautiful he was. How the fury made his green eyes even more intense, how the muscle in his jaw jumped as he fought for control.

"How I handle my social media is none of your fucking business," he said, his voice low and dangerous.

"You're absolutely right," Y/N replied, her voice getting quieter, more dangerous. Years of boardroom negotiations had taught her that the softer you spoke, the more powerful your words became. "It's not. But you asked where all the good girls are, and I'm telling you. No self-respecting woman with actual standards is going to want to compete with the ghost of your ex-girlfriend. No one wants to be someone's consolation prize."

The truth of her words hit the room like a bomb. Y/N could see it in the way Tom and Ed exchanged glances, in the way Max shifted uncomfortably, in the way Pietra's face showed a mixture of concern and fascination. But mostly, she could see it in the way Lando's face went completely white before flushing with fury.

"That's complete bullshit," he said, standing now, using his height like a weapon. He loomed over her seated form, and for a moment, that old, instinctive fear flickered in Y/N’s chest—the kind she'd carried since childhood, from people who used their physical presence to silence her. But she’d learned long ago not to flinch, not to hand anyone that kind of power.

"Is it?" she asked, rising to her feet. She only came up to his nose, but her presence was unshakable. She held his gaze, calm and unyielding. "When was the last time you posted about being single? When was the last time you removed the pictures of you and Olivia from your Instagram? When was the last time you asked your family to stop engaging with her posts?"

"I don't—"

"When was the last time you took off that fucking bracelet she gave you?"

The words exploded out of her with more venom than she'd intended, and she saw Lando's hand instinctively move to his wrist, to the metal bangle that had become as much a part of his daily uniform as his watch or his racing gloves. Y/N had watched him wear that bracelet for fourteen months, had felt physically sick every time she saw it catching the light, every time she was forced to confront the visual reminder that he was still carrying pieces of another woman with him everywhere he went.

"You don't know what you're talking about," Lando said, but his voice lacked conviction now. His hand was still touching the bracelet, as if he was suddenly aware of its weight on his wrist.

"Don't I?" Y/N laughed, but there was no humor in the sound. "I know that you wear her jewelry every single day. I know that your family treats her like she's still part of the family even though you broke up three years ago. I know that you claim to want something real while maintaining connections to someone who's moved on with someone else."

"You can deny it all you want," Y/N continued, her small frame vibrating with barely contained fury, every muscle tense with the effort of not screaming. "But actions speak louder than words, don't they? And your actions are screaming that you're still completely hung up on a woman who moved on from you three fucking years ago."

The profanity felt good on her tongue, felt like the only way to adequately express the rage and hurt that had been building inside her for over a year. She saw Lando flinch slightly at her tone, saw something flicker across his face that might have been hurt if she hadn't known better.

"I'm not asking anyone to compete with anything," Lando snapped, taking a step closer to her. "Olivia and I ended on good terms. We're friends. There's nothing wrong with that."

The word 'friends' hit Y/N like a physical blow. She felt that familiar burning in her chest, the rage that had carried her through every dark moment of her life. The rage that had kept her warm through childhood and teenage humiliations and every moment in her adult life when she'd felt small and unwanted and completely disposable.

"Friends," she repeated, tasting the word like poison on her tongue. "Is that what you call still wearing her bracelet?"

"We ended things amicably. There's nothing wrong with staying civil with an ex."

"Civil?" Y/N said, her voice rising. "Civil is not blocking them, fine. Civil is being polite if you run into them. Civil is not maintaining constant social media connections, wearing jewelry they gave you—" her eyes flicked pointedly to his wrist "—and having your mother comment heart emojis on their beach photos!"

The silence that followed was deafening. Max cleared his throat awkwardly, but neither Y/N nor Lando acknowledged him.

"That bracelet—" Lando's voice was low, dangerous, "—is none of your business."

"It is when you're sitting here whining about not finding someone!" Y/N's hands clenched into fists at her sides. "No ‘good woman’ is going to want to wonder if she's just a placeholder until Olivia decides she wants you back."

"You don't know what you're talking about." Each word was precisely enunciated, his accent thickening with anger. "Olivia has a boyfriend. She's moved on."

"Has she? Have you?" Y/N challenged. "Because from where I'm standing, it looks like you're keeping your options open. Still maintaining those connections, just in case. Tell me, Lando, do you deny it?"

The muscle in his jaw jumped. His eyes—those beautiful eyes that haunted her dreams—narrowed into slits. The silence stretched between them, taut as a wire.

"That's what I thought," Y/N said quietly, but the words carried the weight of a shout.

You don't know anything about my relationships," Lando spat. "What makes you such an expert? When's the last time you even had a boyfriend? Hell, have you ever even had a real one? I’ve actually been in relationships—what do you even know about any of this? I bet you’ve never had a real boyfriend in your entire life."

The words hit their mark with devastating precision. Y/N felt her breath catch, felt the familiar shame crawl up her throat like bile. He was right, of course. She'd never been kissed, never been held, never been chosen by anyone. Not even by him, her supposed soulmate, who looked at her like she was absolutely nothing.

The cruelty of it was breathtaking. Here was the man the universe had supposedly designed for her, the person who was meant to love and understand her better than anyone else in the world, and he was using her deepest insecurities as weapons against her.

But she'd learned long ago how to weaponize her pain, how to turn her wounds into ammunition.

"That's completely irrelevant," she said, each word precisely enunciated.  "We're not talking about my romantic history or lack thereof. We're talking about your complete inability to understand why decent women run in the opposite direction when they see you coming."

"My inability?" Lando laughed, but there was no humor in it. The sound was harsh, ugly, designed to cut. "You want to psychoanalyze my relationship with my ex? Fine. Let's talk about how you push everyone away before they can get close. Let's talk about how you've built walls so high that no one can climb them."

Y/N felt her carefully constructed composure beginning to crack. He was getting too close to truths she'd never voiced aloud, cutting too near to wounds that had never properly healed. "You don't know what you're talking about."

"Don't I?" Lando's laugh was harsh, nothing like his usual warm chuckle. "It's obvious to anyone who bothers to look. You're terrified of being vulnerable, so you criticize everyone else who tries. At least I put myself out there. At least I try."

"Try?" Y/N's voice cracked on the word. "You call what you do trying? Messaging models on Instagram isn't trying, Lando. Leaving clubs with a different girl every weekend isn't trying. It's collecting conquests."

The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees. Even their friends, who had been watching the exchange like a tennis match, collectively held their breath.

"Conquests?" Lando's voice was deadly quiet. "Is that what you think of me?"

"Everyone thinks that of you," Y/N said, even as part of her screamed to take it back. "Your reputation precedes you. All those girls who've sold stories about you, all those photos of you leaving parties with different women—"

"You believe tabloid gossip now?"

"Are you denying it? Are you saying you haven't slept with dozens of women? That you didn't spend the first 6 years of your career treating the paddock like your personal dating pool?"

Lando's face had gone pale. His hands were clenched so tightly at his sides that the veins in his forearms stood out in sharp relief. "My past is my past."

"But it's not the past, is it?" Y/N pressed on, unable to stop now that the floodgates had opened. "It's your present too. The parties, the girls, the constant need for attention—"

"Attention?" He stepped even closer, and Y/N had to fight the urge to step back. "You think I do this for attention?"

"Don't you? The PR games with—" Lando cut her off.

"That's rich, coming from someone who's built their entire personality around being bitter and alone."

The words hit like physical blows, each one finding its mark with surgical precision. Y/N felt something inside her chest begin to crumble, felt the careful walls she'd built around her heart start to crack under the assault.

"I'm not bitter," Y/N said, and she could hear her voice beginning to shake despite her best efforts. "I just have standards. And those standards don't include men who are too emotionally weak to let go of the past."

"Weak?" The word came out like a roar. Lando took another step closer, close enough that she could see the flecks of gold in his green eyes, could smell the subtle scent of his cologne mixed with something that was purely him. "You think I'm weak?"

"I think you're a coward," Y/N said without hesitation, the words coming from some deep, dark place inside her that had been fed on years of disappointment and rejection. "You want this perfect woman, this mature, intelligent partner, but you're too fucking scared to actually make yourself available for her. You keep one foot in your past because it's safe. Because if you never fully commit to moving forward, you never risk being hurt again."

The accusation hung between them like a live wire, sparking with dangerous electricity. Y/N could see that her words had found their target, could see the way Lando's face went through a series of expressions—shock, recognition, fury.

"You don't know anything about me," he said, his voice low and dangerous. "You sit there in your fancy apartment in a very prestigious area of London, with your fancy job and your fancy education, and you think you have everyone figured out. But you don't know shit about what I've been through or why I make the choices I make."

"I'm not the one pretending to be something I'm not!" Y/N said. 

"Aren't you?" The words cracked like a whip between them. "At least I'm honest about who I am. I don't pretend to be perfect while judging everyone else."

"I don't—"

"You do!" His voice rose to nearly a shout. "You sit there every fucking time we're together, watching everyone, analyzing everyone, finding everyone wanting. Like you're so much better than the rest of us who actually dare to feel things, to make mistakes, to be human!"

"Being human doesn't mean being reckless with other people's feelings!"

"Whose feelings?" He threw his arms wide. "Whose feelings have I been reckless with? The girls who knew exactly what they were getting into? The ones who wanted the same thing I did—a good time, no strings attached? Or is this about your feelings?"

The question hung between them like a loaded gun. Y/N felt the blood drain from her face.

"My feelings have nothing to do with this," she said, but her voice came out whisper-thin.

"Don't they?" Lando moved even closer, close enough that she could see the way his chest rose and fell with each angry breath. "Because from where I'm standing, it sounds like you're taking this all very personally for someone who claims not to care."

"I don't—"

"You don't what? Don't care? Then why are you so invested in my love life? Why does it matter to you if I still wear a bracelet my ex gave me? Why do you care if I sleep with models or party too much or—"

"I said I don't care! You're the one playing innocent, asking yourself why you can't find someone serious—and I'm answering your stupid question," Y/N replied, her voice steady despite the chaos raging inside her. "From your actions, it looks like you're terrified of real intimacy. It's clear you'd rather play games with PR relationships and keep wearing jewelry from dead relationships than risk actually putting yourself out there for something real."

"And what about you?" Lando's voice was getting uglier now, more vicious. "What's your excuse for being completely fucking miserable all the time? What's your excuse for treating everyone around you like they're beneath you?"

"I don't—"

"You do," Lando interrupted, and Y/N could see that he was hitting his stride now, could see that he'd found his target and was preparing to destroy it. "You walk into every room like you're doing everyone a favor by gracing them with your presence. You act like you're so much smarter, so much more sophisticated than everyone else. But really, you're just terrified that if you let anyone get close enough to see who you really are, they'll realize there's nothing there worth knowing."

Each word was a knife, expertly wielded to cause maximum damage. Y/N felt them slice through her defenses, finding every vulnerable spot she’d tried so hard to protect.

The worst part was that some of it was true—she did keep people at a distance, did shield herself behind walls of competence and sophistication. And now, those walls were starting to crack. She could feel the little girl bleeding through—the one who’d been thrown into hallways, called names, told she was worthless.

But he didn't know why. He didn't know about the childhood that had taught her that love was conditional and dangerous, that vulnerability was punished, that the only safe way to exist was to make yourself indispensable through achievement and control.

"At least I don't parade fake relationships around for publicity," she managed, her voice shaking despite her best efforts to keep it steady.

"Fake relationships?" Lando's laugh was harsh and meant to humiliate. "You mean Matilde? That's work, Y/N. That's business. Something you might understand if you lived in the real world instead of your ivory tower."

"The real world?" Y/N's voice rose, her famous composure finally beginning to crack like ice in a spring thaw. "You think you live in the real world? You live in a fucking bubble where everything is handed to you on a silver platter, where people pay you millions to drive in circles, where you've never had to work for anything meaningful in your entire privileged life."

"I've worked for everything I have," Lando shot back, his face flushed with anger and indignation. "I've been racing since I was a kid. I've sacrificed everything for this career."

"Have you?" Y/N's voice was gaining strength now, feeding off her anger like a fire feeding off oxygen. "Because from where I'm sitting, it looks like you've just had an extended adolescence. You get to play with expensive toys for a living while the rest of us have real jobs, real responsibilities, real fucking problems."

"Real problems?" Lando's voice dripped with disdain, with the casual dismissal that only came from genuine privilege. "Like what? Like sitting in your fancy apartment judging people on the internet? Like working your cute little nine-to-five job that probably pays you less than I make in a single day?"

The classism in his voice, the casual dismissal of her work, of her struggles, of everything she'd built for herself—it was like being slapped across the face with a glove made of contempt. Y/N felt something hot and dangerous surge through her veins, felt every careful lesson in emotional control her childhood had taught her begin to crumble.

"You privileged piece of shit," Y/N whispered, her voice deadly quiet. "You have absolutely no idea what I've been through. No idea what I've had to overcome to get where I am."

"Oh, here we go," Lando said, rolling his eyes with theatrical exaggeration. "The sob story. Poor little Y/N, had to move to London all by herself. Had to get a job like every other adult in the world. Had to actually work for things instead of having them handed to her. How absolutely tragic."

"You don't know anything about my life," Y/N said, and there was something in her voice that should have warned him to stop. Something dark and dangerous and barely contained, like a dam about to burst.

But Lando was too angry to listen, too hurt by her words to care about the warning signs. Too focused on inflicting damage to notice that he was about to cross a line that could never be uncrossed.

"I know enough," he said, his voice getting crueler with every word. "I know you're a miserable person who gets off on making everyone else miserable too. You sit there acting superior to everyone when you're just angry that no one wants you."

The words hung in the air like a toxic cloud. Y/N felt them settle into her bones, into all the spaces where her childhood fears lived. All the spaces that whispered that she was unlovable, unwanted, destined to spend her life alone.

But Lando wasn't done. He was just getting started.

"You act like you're too good for everyone," Lando pressed on. "But really, you're just scared. Scared that if you let someone close enough to see who you really are, they'll realize there's nothing special about you at all."

He kept going, his voice turning uglier, more vicious, like he could sense how much damage he was doing and wanted to twist the knife. "You're cold. You're bitter. You're judgmental. You suck the fucking joy out of every room you walk into."

Each word was a precision strike, aimed at her deepest insecurities with the accuracy of someone who'd been watching her, studying her, learning her weaknesses even as he pretended to despise her.

"You want to know why you've never had a real relationship? It's not because you have standards. It's because you're completely incapable of human connection. You're broken, Y/N. And not in some romantic, fixable way that makes for a good movie. You're just fundamentally, irreparably broken."

The silence that followed was deafening. Y/N stood there, swaying slightly on her feet, feeling like she'd been hit by a freight train. Or maybe like she'd been thrown out into a hallway again, abandoned and alone while neighbours walked past and pretended not to see her.

Her soulmate—the person the universe had chosen to love her unconditionally—had just told her she was fundamentally broken. Had just confirmed every terrible thing she'd ever believed about herself, every fear that haunted her in the darkest hours of the night.

The irony was so cruel it was almost funny. Almost.

"Y/N," Pietra said softly, starting to rise from the sofa, her voice thick with horror at what she'd just witnessed.

But Lando still wasn't done. He was too caught up in his own fury, too intoxicated by the power of words to wound, to stop now.

"You know what the worst part is?" he continued, his voice dripping with contempt. "You actually think you're better than everyone else. You sit there with your fancy education and your perfect grammar and your sophisticated opinions, and you judge all of us like we're beneath you. But at least we're capable of happiness. At least we can connect with other human beings. You're just..." he paused, searching for the most devastating word possible. "You're just pathetic."

Y/N felt something inside her chest shatter completely. Some last, fragile piece of hope that she'd been protecting without even realizing it. The piece that had whispered, maybe someday, maybe if he knew, maybe if he understood...

That piece was dead now, murdered by his words and buried under the weight of his disgust.

The mark on her hip felt like it was burning straight through her skin, a constant reminder of the cosmic joke that was her life. Somewhere in the universe, there was supposed to be someone who loved her perfectly, who understood her completely, who chose her above all others.

Instead, she got Lando Norris. Beautiful, talented, charismatic Lando Norris, who looked at her like she was less than human and spoke to her like she was something that needed to be exterminated.

Y/N looked around the room at her friends—Max and Pietra looking shocked and uncomfortable, Tom and Ed staring with wide eyes, everyone frozen in the aftermath of the emotional explosion that had just torn through their peaceful evening.

"You're right," she said quietly, her voice steady despite the storm raging inside her chest. "I am pathetic. I'm broken and pathetic and completely unlovable. But at least I know it. At least I'm not walking around pretending to be something I'm not, desperate for a love I'm too much of a coward to actually pursue."

She turned to the room, to their friends who had sat in horrified silence through the entire exchange. "I'm sorry," she said simply. "I'll go."

She moved toward the door, her legs somehow still carrying her despite feeling like they were made of lead. Every step was agony, every breath felt like swallowing glass—but she forced herself to keep going.

Y/N was already gathering her purse with hands that shook only slightly. She couldn’t look at any of them again. Couldn’t bring herself to meet Lando’s gaze to see if there was any regret there—any recognition of how far he’d gone. Any humanity left in those green eyes that had once made her dream of impossible things.

She couldn’t stay in this room another second, not while breathing the same air as the man who was supposed to love her unconditionally—who had just eviscerated her with surgical precision.

At the door, she paused one last time, not turning around.

"And Lando?" she said, her hand on the door handle, her voice carrying clearly across the silent room. "When you're lying in bed tonight, still wearing her bracelet, still wondering why you can't find your perfect woman—remember this conversation. Remember that maybe the problem isn't that there aren't any good women out there. Maybe the problem is that you're not good enough for them."

She pulled the door open, then paused again, some masochistic part of her needing to twist the knife one more time.

"You want to know what your real problem is? It's not that you're still hung up on Olivia. It's that you're exactly the kind of man who would rather destroy someone else than admit you might be wrong. You're cruel, Lando. Genuinely cruel. And no amount of money or fame or pretty eyes is going to change that."

Y/N stepped out into the hallway and pulled the door closed behind her, cutting off whatever response Lando might have had. The silence in the corridor was deafening after the emotional intensity of the fight, and she stood there for a moment, trying to process what had just happened.

She'd fought with her soulmate. Had screamed at him, had been cruel to him, had exposed her deepest wounds only to have them used against her. The man the universe had supposedly designed for her had just told her she was fundamentally broken and unlovable, and the worst part was that she was starting to believe he might be right.

The elevator ride down felt like descending into hell. Y/N stared at her reflection in the polished steel doors and saw exactly what Lando had described—a cold, bitter woman who pushed everyone away before they could hurt her. A woman so damaged by her childhood that she couldn't connect with other human beings even when they were literally designed by the universe to be hers.

She thought about the way he'd looked at her during their fight—not with the careful blankness he usually employed, but with genuine disgust. Like she was something repulsive that had crawled out from under a rock. Like her very existence offended him on some fundamental level.

And maybe it did. Maybe that was why he'd been so cruel to her from the moment they met. Maybe on some subconscious level, he could sense the connection between them and rejected it utterly. Rejected her utterly.

The thought made her laugh, but it came out broken and bitter. Of course her soulmate would be the one person in the world who couldn't stand her. Of course the universe would give her someone who confirmed every terrible thing she'd ever believed about herself.

Her parents had told her she was worthless, disposable, a burden they never wanted. The boy in school had told her she was pathetic, laughable, deserving of public humiliation. And now her soulmate had told her she was fundamentally broken, irreparably damaged, incapable of human connection.

Maybe they were all right. Maybe there really was something wrong with her, something that made her unlovable no matter how hard she tried to fix herself, no matter how much she achieved or how much she grew.

When she finally made it to her apartment, she went straight to her bathroom and stared at herself in the mirror. Her face was blotchy and swollen from crying tears she didn't remember shedding, her hair was a mess, her clothes were wrinkled. She looked exactly like what she was: a broken woman who had just been destroyed by the person who was supposed to love her most.

She pulled up her shirt and looked at the mark on her hip—that soulmate mark that was supposed to represent destiny, cosmic connection, perfect love. In the harsh bathroom lighting, it looked like nothing more than a birthmark. A random pattern of pigmentation that meant absolutely nothing.

What a joke. What a cosmic, cruel, devastating joke.

She thought about telling him. About marching up to his hotel or cornering him the next day and showing him the mark. About watching his face as he realized that the universe had played the cruelest possible trick on both of them.

But what would be the point? He'd made his feelings about her perfectly clear. Learning that they were soulmates wouldn't change anything except to add a layer of cosmic irony to their mutual hatred. If anything, it would probably make him treat her even worse, knowing that he was stuck with her for eternity.

No, she decided. She would keep her secret. Would carry it like all her other secrets—quietly, privately, without burdening anyone else with the weight of it.

The tears came again then, great heaving sobs that shook her entire body. She slid down the bathroom wall until she was sitting on the cold tile floor, crying for the fight, for the cruel words, for the look in Lando's eyes when he'd told her she was broken.

But mostly, she cried for the death of a dream she'd barely let herself acknowledge. The tiny, secret hope that maybe, someday, when he learned they were soulmates, everything would change. That he would see her differently, understand her differently, maybe even love her.

That hope was dead now, murdered by his words and buried under the weight of his disgust.

Because even if he ever found out the truth—even if he ever learned that the universe had marked them for each other—nothing would change. He would still see her as broken, as unworthy, as fundamentally unlovable.

And maybe, Y/N thought as she finally cried herself into exhaustion on her bathroom floor, maybe he would be right.

Maybe she really was fundamentally broken. Maybe she really was incapable of human connection. Maybe the universe had made a mistake when it paired them together, had somehow failed to account for the fact that she was too damaged to be anyone's soulmate.

Maybe she was destined to spend the rest of her life loving someone who looked at her like she was absolutely nothing at all.

The mark on her hip burned like a brand, a constant reminder of the cosmic joke that was her existence. Somewhere out there, other people were finding their soulmates, were experiencing the joy and completeness that came with cosmic connection.

But not her. Never her.

She was Y/N, the girl nobody wanted. Not her parents, not her classmates, not the universe itself, it seemed.

And certainly not Lando Norris, no matter what some meaningless mark on her skin might suggest.

Y/N stood in her bathroom for what felt like hours, staring at her reflection in the unforgiving fluorescent light. Her face was a roadmap of devastation—red-rimmed eyes that looked like she'd been crying for days instead of hours, blotchy skin that bore the evidence of every tear she'd shed, hair that hung limp and disheveled around her shoulders. She looked like a woman who had been systematically destroyed, and maybe that's exactly what she was.

The shower called to her like a sanctuary, promising the illusion of washing away the evening's horrors. She turned the water as hot as she could stand it, watching the steam begin to fog the mirror until her reflection mercifully disappeared. The pragmatism that had carried her through childhood trauma whispered that she should eat something, should drink water, should take care of the basic needs that would help her body process the alcohol and stress. But she couldn't bring herself to care about any of that.

Food felt impossible when her stomach was twisted into knots of anguish. Water felt pointless when she was drowning in an ocean of her own tears. Self-care felt like a mockery when the person she was supposed to care for had just been declared fundamentally unworthy of love by the one person whose opinion mattered most.

She stripped off her clothes mechanically, each piece of fabric feeling heavy with the weight of the evening's memories. 

When she finally stepped under the scalding spray, the tears came again with renewed force. The hot water mixed with her sobs, washing away the salt tracks on her cheeks only for them to be immediately replaced by fresh ones. She braced her hands against the shower wall and let herself break completely, let herself feel the full weight of what Lando had done to her.

The worst part wasn't even the specific words he'd used, though each one had been chosen with surgical precision to cause maximum damage. The worst part was the look in his eyes when he'd said them—the complete and utter conviction that every cruel assessment was justified, that she deserved every verbal blow he'd delivered.

You're fundamentally, irreparably broken.

The words echoed in her mind like a death sentence, made worse by the fact that they'd come from someone whose DNA was literally designed to complement hers. If her soulmate could look at her and see nothing but damage, nothing but a pathetic woman who sucked the joy out of every room she entered, then what hope did she have with anyone else?

Y/N slid down the shower wall until she was sitting on the tile floor, hot water cascading over her hunched form as she wrapped her arms around her knees and sobbed. This was worse than anything her parents had ever done to her. Their cruelty had been born of their own trauma, their own inability to process emotions in healthy ways. They'd hurt her because they didn't know better, because they were products of their own damaged childhoods.

But Lando—Lando had hurt her with full awareness of what he was doing. She'd seen the moment when he'd realized how much damage his words were causing, had watched his eyes sharpen with something that looked almost like satisfaction as he'd found each new vulnerability to exploit. He'd taken her deepest insecurities, the fears she'd spent years trying to overcome, and had weaponized them against her with the skill of someone who understood exactly how to destroy another person.

Her parents had broken her accidentally. Lando had broken her on purpose.

The water began to run cold, but Y/N couldn't summon the energy to move. She sat there on the shower floor, shivering as the temperature dropped, feeling like the cold was appropriate somehow. Like her body was finally matching the frozen wasteland that her heart had become.

When she finally forced herself to stand and turn off the water, her legs felt like they belonged to someone else. Everything felt disconnected, like she was watching herself go through the motions of drying off and putting on pajamas from somewhere outside her own body. The dissociation was familiar—a defense mechanism that had carried her through the worst moments of her childhood, when the only way to survive was to mentally remove herself from the situation until it was over.

But this situation would never be over. She would have to carry the knowledge of what Lando really thought of her for the rest of her life, would have to see him at future gatherings and pretend that his words hadn't carved out pieces of her soul and left them bleeding on Max and Pietra's living room floor.

Y/N crawled into her bed without bothering to turn on any lights, pulling the covers up to her chin like a child seeking comfort from monsters that couldn't be defeated by hiding. The Egyptian cotton sheets that usually felt luxurious against her skin now felt rough and foreign, as if even her own bed was rejecting her presence.

The tears started again almost immediately, and this time they came with a violence that scared her. These weren't the controlled tears she'd shed in the shower, or even the angry tears that had punctuated their fight. These were the kind of tears that came from the deepest part of her psyche, from the wounded child who had never been properly comforted, who had learned to cry silently so as not to invite more punishment.

She pressed her face into her pillow to muffle the sounds that were escaping from her throat—sounds that didn't seem human, that sounded like an animal caught in a trap. The pillow quickly became soaked with tears and snot, but she didn't care. Nothing mattered anymore except the overwhelming need to release the pain that was threatening to consume her from the inside out.

You're just pathetic.

The words played on repeat in her mind, accompanied by the image of Lando's face as he'd delivered them. She'd seen disgust there, contempt, a kind of clinical detachment as he'd dissected her personality and found it wanting. No anger, which might have suggested passion of some kind. Just cold, calculated destruction delivered with the precision of a surgeon removing a tumor.

Y/N clutched her phone, considering calling Sophie, a good friend from work, or maybe her parents, or anyone who might be able to offer some comfort in this moment of complete devastation. But every time she started to dial, she stopped herself. What could she possibly say? That she'd had a fight with Lando and he'd said mean things to her? It sounded so trivial when reduced to simple terms, so childish and overdramatic.

She couldn't explain that he was her soulmate without revealing a secret she'd guarded for twelve months. Couldn't explain why his words carried more weight than anyone else's without admitting to the cosmic connection that made his rejection so much more devastating than ordinary cruelty.

And even if she could explain, what would be the point? Sophie would probably try to smooth things over, would suggest that Lando hadn't meant what he'd said, that he'd been drunk or angry or simply lashing out without thinking. But Y/N had seen his face. Had heard the conviction in his voice. He'd meant every word, had probably been thinking those things about her for fourteen months and had finally found an excuse to voice them.

The hunger clawed at her stomach, a sharp reminder that she'd only had wine at dinner, that her body was running on nothing but alcohol and adrenaline and heartbreak. But the thought of food made her feel sick. How could she nourish a body that housed a soul so fundamentally flawed that even the universe's perfect design couldn't make it lovable?

She rolled onto her side and stared out the floor-to-ceiling windows that offered a spectacular view of London's skyline. The city glittered below her like a constellation of possibilities, millions of people living their lives, falling in love, being chosen, being wanted. And here she was, 54 floors above it all, completely alone with the knowledge that she was the exception to every rule about love and connection and human worth.

Somewhere out there, Lando was probably going to sleep without a care in the world, completely unaware that he'd just destroyed the person who was literally made for him.

Maybe he was right to be disgusted by her. Maybe the universe had made a mistake, had somehow paired her with someone so far out of her league that his natural instinct was to reject her entirely. Maybe she was supposed to be grateful that he'd never shown any romantic interest, that he'd saved them both from the cosmic embarrassment of a fundamentally mismatched pairing.

You suck the fucking joy out of every room you walk into.

The accusation felt particularly cruel because it contained just enough truth to burrow deep into her psyche and take root. She did guard herself carefully in social situations, did hold herself apart from the easy camaraderie that seemed to come so naturally to everyone else. But that was survival, not malice. That was the result of a childhood that had taught her that letting people see your real emotions was a guarantee that those emotions would be used against you.

Y/N pulled her knees to her chest and rocked slightly, a self-soothing motion she'd developed as a child when the fights between her parents got too loud, when the threats became too real, when the only comfort available was the comfort she could provide herself. The motion was automatic now, muscle memory that activated during times of extreme distress.

She thought about her therapist's words, about being the product of emotional unpredictability and conditional love, about how her nervous system had adapted to survive chaos by becoming hyper-independent and emotionally constipated. Her therapist would probably say that Lando's attack had triggered every abandonment wound she'd ever carried, and had activated the deepest core belief that she was fundamentally unworthy of love.

But knowing the psychological mechanisms didn't make the pain any less real. Understanding why she was broken didn't make her any less broken. And it certainly didn't change the fact that the person who was supposed to see past all her defenses, who was supposed to love her despite her flaws, had instead chosen to use those flaws as weapons against her.

The hours crawled by with agonizing slowness. Y/N watched the digital clock on her nightstand tick from 11:47 PM to midnight to 1:00 AM, each minute feeling like an eternity of pain that had to be endured. She tried closing her eyes, tried willing herself into unconsciousness, but every time she started to drift off, Lando's voice would echo in her mind with fresh cruelty.

You're completely incapable of human connection.

The words felt like a prophecy, a future written in stone. If she couldn't connect with her soulmate, if the person literally designed by the universe to complement her found her so repulsive that he felt compelled to destroy her, then what hope did she have of ever finding love or acceptance or even basic human warmth?

Around 2:00 AM, she gave up pretending to try to sleep and turned on her phone, scrolling mindlessly through social media feeds full of people living their apparently perfect lives. Happy couples posting anniversary photos, friends celebrating promotions, families gathered around dinner tables with genuine smiles. The images felt like they were from another planet, a world where people were capable of the kind of joy and connection that seemed permanently out of her reach.

She almost opened Instagram to look at Lando's profile, some masochistic part of her wanting to torture herself with images of him looking happy and carefree, probably already having forgotten about their fight entirely. But she stopped herself just in time, knowing that seeing his face would only make everything worse.

Instead, she found herself googling articles about soulmate connections, searching for some explanation of how the universe could have gotten things so wrong. The articles were full of romantic nonsense about instant recognition and unbreakable bonds, about soulmates who found each other across crowded rooms and knew immediately that they were meant to be together.

None of them mentioned what happened when your soulmate looked at you with disgust. None of them offered guidance for what to do when the person who was supposed to complete you spent over a year treating you like an unwelcome stranger. None of them acknowledged that sometimes the universe's grand design was nothing more than a cosmic practical joke played on people who were already damaged beyond repair.

Y/N threw her phone across the room, not caring when it hit the wall with a sharp crack that probably indicated a broken screen. The sound was satisfying somehow, a physical manifestation of the internal destruction she was experiencing. At least now her phone matched the rest of her life—broken and probably beyond repair.

The tears came in waves throughout the night, sometimes subsiding to a trickle that allowed her to catch her breath, sometimes returning with such force that she had to bury her face in her pillow to avoid disturbing her neighbors. Her throat became raw from crying, her eyes swollen to the point where she could barely see, her chest tight with the effort of breathing around the constant sobs.

She'd cried before—had cried when her parents threw her out of the house, had cried when that boy in school humiliated her, had cried during those first terrifying weeks in London when everything felt foreign and hostile. But this was different. This was the kind of crying that came from complete hopelessness, from the realization that the one person who was supposed to love her unconditionally had instead chosen to confirm every terrible thing she'd ever believed about herself.

Around 3:00 AM, she found herself thinking about her grandmother from her father's side, the woman who had tried so hard to break up her parents' marriage. Maybe the old woman had been right all along. Maybe Y/N's mother wasn't worthy of the family name, and maybe Y/N had inherited that unworthiness, had carried it in her DNA like a genetic curse that made her fundamentally unlovable.

The thought sent her into a fresh spiral of anguish, because even her parents—damaged and cruel as they had been—had at least loved each other enough to fight for their relationship. Her father had been willing to threaten his own mother to protect his marriage, had chosen his wife over his family of origin when forced to make that decision.

But Y/N had never inspired that kind of devotion in anyone. Had never been worth fighting for, never been worth choosing, never been worth protecting. Even her soulmate, who should have been programmed by the universe to cherish and defend her, had instead chosen to tear her apart at the first opportunity.

Y/N made a decision in that moment, lying in her bed at 3:17 AM with tears streaming down her face and her heart breaking in ways she didn't know were possible. She would never tell him. Would never give him the opportunity to reject her knowing what she really was to him. Would never put herself through the devastation of watching him realize that even the universe's perfect design couldn't make her lovable.

She would carry this secret to her grave, would love him from afar with the knowledge that it would never be returned, would never be acknowledged, would never be anything more than a source of endless pain.

Because that's what broken people did. They protected others from their damage, even when it destroyed them in the process.

Even when it meant spending eternity loving someone who thought they were fundamentally unworthy of love.

Even when it meant accepting that maybe, just maybe, everyone who had ever told her she was worthless had been right all along.

The decision brought no peace, only a cold kind of resignation that settled into her bones like winter frost. She would continue to attend gatherings where he was present, would continue to pretend that his presence didn't affect her, and would continue to guard the secret that was slowly killing her from the inside out.

By 4:00 AM, her body had begun to rebel against the sustained emotional assault. Her hands were shaking uncontrollably, her breathing had become shallow and rapid, and her heart was racing like she'd just run a marathon. The physical symptoms only added to her distress, creating a feedback loop where her body's stress response made her more anxious, which in turn made her body react more severely.

She tried the breathing exercises her therapist had taught her, tried to ground herself by focusing on physical sensations like the texture of her sheets and the temperature of the air against her skin. But nothing worked. The panic was too strong, the emotional pain too overwhelming for any coping mechanism to penetrate.

As the sky began to lighten with the first hints of dawn, Y/N realized that she hadn't stopped crying for a single moment in the past seven hours. Her body was dehydrated, her head was pounding, and her chest felt like someone was sitting on it. But still the tears came, as if her body was trying to expel the poison of Lando's words through her eyes.

The hunger had evolved from a dull ache to sharp, stabbing pains that made her curl into an even tighter ball. But the thought of food still made her nauseous. Her body was running on pure emotional adrenaline, sustained by nothing but grief and the wine that was probably still circulating through her system.

Around 5:30 AM, she heard her neighbors beginning to stir—the sound of footsteps in the hallway, the distant hum of morning news programs, the everyday sounds of people starting their normal days. The normalcy of it all felt surreal, like she was watching life happen from behind glass, separate and excluded from the simple pleasure of routine human existence.

Y/N tried one more time to force herself to sleep, pulling her duvet over her head and squeezing her eyes shut. But behind her closed lids, all she could see was Lando's face as he'd delivered his final judgment, the clinical detachment with which he'd dissected her personality and found it lacking.

You're just fundamentally, irreparably broken.

The words had taken on a life of their own, echoing through her mind with the persistence of a song stuck on repeat. They felt true in a way that made her stomach clench with despair, true in a way that made every breath feel like an act of defiance against the obvious fact that she shouldn't exist, shouldn't take up space in a world where she clearly didn't belong.

By 6:00 AM, something in her body had reached its breaking point. The sustained emotional trauma, combined with the lack of sleep, lack of food, and lingering alcohol in her system, had created a perfect storm of physical distress. Her heart was racing so fast she could hear it pounding in her ears, drowning out all other sounds. Her breathing had become so shallow and rapid that she was starting to feel lightheaded.

And then, suddenly, she couldn't breathe at all.

The panic attack hit her like a freight train, sudden and overwhelming in its intensity. Her chest seized up completely, as if someone had wrapped steel bands around her ribs and was tightening them with each passing second. Her heart rate spiked even higher, so fast that she was convinced it would burst from the strain. Her hands went numb, her vision started to blur, and her entire body was consumed with the absolute certainty that she was dying.

This was it. This was how it would end. Alone in her expensive apartment, destroyed by the cruelest words her soulmate could devise, dying of a heart attack at twenty-five because her body had finally given up under the weight of a lifetime of emotional trauma.

With the last rational thought she could manage, Y/N grabbed her cracked phone from where she'd thrown it against the wall and dialed 999 with trembling fingers that barely obeyed her commands.

"Emergency services, what's your emergency?"

"I think... I think I'm having a heart attack," she gasped into the phone, her voice barely recognizable even to herself. "I can't breathe... my heart is racing... I think I'm dying."