Hannah felt her face warm as he studied the dress she had altered, his head tilted like someone reading a foreign text and suddenly understanding every word. “This is another level,” he said, and she didn’t know if the heat in her cheeks came from the compliment or the way he looked at her, as if seeing something no one else at that party would notice. On the other end of the line, Madison’s silence lasted only a moment. “And the talent you’re so proud of only exists because I gave you a place to work,” she said.
The silence came first, then whispers, then laughter. A voice commented, not even bothering to lower its tone. “You all should be ashamed, not her,” someone else shot back. “She should have her own brand.
” The remark rippled through the nearby tables. It was about years of being erased, being used, being the hand that creates while someone else signs. The next morning, Hannah walked into the studio before opening hours. She laughed for the first time in days, holding her phone between her shoulder and ear while searching for her house keys.
But Tiffany had a way of turning even the most imposing room into something cozy. “One day they’ll rob you of the whole house,” Jeffree stopped mid-sentence. “Who drew these? ” He picked up a sketch.
“You need to have your own brand. ”
“Because it’s not that simple, Jeffrey,” Hannah said. “I’ll build the studio with you from scratch and help launch your brand with your name, only yours. ”
The silence that followed felt different from all the other silences that afternoon.
“No, why not this time? ” he pressed. “If he is offering you this, it is because he believes it is yours, only yours, and he wants the world to see it exactly that way. If anyone tries to erase you again, I’ll be the first to scream.
”
“What if no one shows up? ” Hannah whispered. “Wait, is all of this by a single designer? ” The photo was posted while the party was still going on.
Hannah thought that would be more than enough for a single day of life. “Exactly. That is what we must do,” Jeffree said. “It’s still too early to tell if it worked.
”
She held the sketch close, not for its utility, but for what she dreamed of. The first drop fell on Hannah’s forehead before she could even finish the sentence. He remained silent for a moment, genuinely surprised. “What did you tell her?
”
“And I don’t know what to do with that because there is no answer I can give that will make it hurt any less. ”
They sat there for a while in silence until the matter settled within both of them. Only then did Tiffany look up, remembering the other problem that had come knocking on the door that same week. “Three Jeffrey people who waited months to book with me and I had to say no because I can’t handle anything else.
”
Within a few weeks, a second studio opened its doors just a few blocks from the first one. “I always tremble at these things,” Jeffree said, handing her a crooked drawing. “This is an offense to my professional eye. ” He smiled, waiting in no rush at all.
She laughed, slipping the crooked paper into her pocket as if it were the most valuable thing she had received in months. “I accept only because this drawing is so bad that I felt sorry for you. ”
From then on, the two began to experience a kind of routine Hannah had never allowed herself to imagine. While this world grew on one side of town, on the other side, something very different was beginning to collapse.
“Original? What do you mean it has nothing original? ” Because for the first time, the missing talent was entirely her own. Each caption fed something that had long ceased to be just jealousy.
Madison poured two glasses of wine without asking if Ashley wanted any, and the two sat in the dimly lit room of the decaying studio, each carrying a different version of the same wound. Madison settled into the armchair, her glass spinning slowly between her fingers. “I’ve hated this girl long enough to not need a new reason. ”
Each grievance fed the other, each reopened memory adding fuel to an anger that on its own might never have grown so large.
“30 years of work and it’s all going to collapse because no one wants to finance a bankrupt business anymore. ”
Hannah remained silent, not knowing exactly what to feel. Instead, she found a suspicious silence. “Desperate people will do anything, Hannah, including faking remorse they don’t feel,” Tiffany warned.
“I don’t want to be the kind of person who turns their back on someone at rock bottom, even if that person never did the same for me. ”
“You stay on as manager,” Hannah said. “And the first thing she does is secure a position inside the very thing she lost,” Tiffany replied. “Or she wants to stay close enough to find a loophole.
”
On the other side of the line, Ashley smiled, still with no one to see. “From the very first sketch I saw on that phone, I knew you would get exactly here,” Jeffree whispered in her ear backstage while Hannah was still trembling with emotion. Using the clause hidden in the purchase contract, that fine print Hannah had never examined carefully enough, Madison filed for the legal reversion of ownership of the original studio, citing a technically valid violation of exclusivity. A security guard she had never seen before opened the door, handing over a sealed envelope without a single word of explanation.
The money had been diverted before even touching the correct accounts, and the studio where it all began was no longer hers. “I’m not going anywhere, Hannah,” Jeffree said. For the first time since discovering the betrayal, Hannah felt that maybe there was ground beneath her feet after all. The coldness of that response hit Hannah like a slap.
“I didn’t know exactly what she was going to do with the contract, but you knew she was going to do something. ”
“Use social media to show the world that Hannah’s talent remained intact even without the original studio,” Tiffany said. The first video went online that same night. Two hours passed, then four.
“I don’t understand. It should have worked,” Hannah said. “What else can I do? And what if it never comes?
”
1,000. 3,000. 10,000. Numbers changing so fast that Tiffany couldn’t even read them out loud in time.
On the other side of the line, Madison remained silent for a long moment before answering. “Then it’s time to ensure she never proves anything. ”
50,000. 100,000.
200,000 views in less than an hour. “I don’t understand what happened to that payment either,” Tiffany said. Holloway made a short but heavy pause. “Two days before.
This means the reversion was blueprint designed and premeditated, planned in advance while the contract was still being negotiated. ”
Before she could even process it all, the phone buzzed again. “And I need to tell you something I should have told you much sooner. If you let me, I want to use all of this together with what you have.
”
She stood still in the middle of the studio, letting the sentence settle inside her. The messages exchanged between the two of them were recovered by the authorities. The original. The same walls, the same windows, the same smell of fabric and wood she had learned to love even before understanding why.
Hannah adjusted the lapel of his blazer naturally, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. The collection felt more personal, as if each piece had been designed on the other side of a struggle she had to lose before understanding what she really wanted to create. All the lights in the hall went out at once, except for a single spotlight, white and direct, illuminating exactly the spot where she stood. Jeffree walked toward her with the seriousness of someone about to do the most important thing he had ever done in his life, and knew it.
He stopped in front of her, looked into her eyes for a long full moment, and then knelt. Inside the box, on a white gold ring, was a diamond cut in a shape Hannah recognized immediately because she herself had drawn that shape hundreds of times in her life. “And every day since then has only convinced me more of one thing,” he said.
