May 21, 2022 – 8:10 AM
RPV2 Tower, Executive Floor

MARISSE

The corridor smelled faintly of polished wood and air-conditioning. It was quiet, save for the soft click of a closing door.

Marisse Rickarte had seen storms before. Typhoons at sea, riots in ports, even the fury of betrayal in men’s eyes. But nothing prepared him for what it felt like to see her again.
To see Rose.

And not recognize the fire in her eyes.
Because there was none.

She stepped out of Andrew’s office like she belonged there. Graceful. Immaculate. Her silhouette as poised as ever. Hair in a neat twist, fitted navy sheath dress, modest heels. Not a thread out of place.

But her eyes... her eyes were different.

There was no glint. No joy. No wildness behind her gaze like before.
Instead, her stare was guarded, weary. Armed, as if waiting to be hurt again.

They stood facing each other in silence, neither moving, as if locked in a standoff between past and present.
As if trying to see who blinked first.
As if the air between them might offer a hint of who they once were.

Marisse swallowed.
“…Ms. Villamor.”

Her jaw tightened. “It’s Mrs. Del Ríos now.”

Of course. He already knew that. He had said it earlier on the phone with Enrique. But hearing it from her lips. It drove a stake into him.

He gave a slow nod. “I heard the good news from your father. Congratulations are in order.”

She tilted her head. “Are they?”

Before he could answer, Andrew stepped out behind her, oblivious to the tension. “Rickarte,” he said casually, “you joining us for the planning session later for the contract signing ceremony?”

Marisse glanced toward Rose, then shook his head. “I’ve got a prior appointment. But…” he paused, shifting slightly, “if Mrs. Del Ríos would be available after, I was hoping we could grab coffee. Just to… catch up.”

Rose stared at him for a beat longer than necessary. Then, she nodded once. “I have an hour.”

“Great,” Marisse said, his voice brittle. “I’ll text you the place.”

She turned and walked off beside Andrew. And just like that, she was gone again.

*******

9:15 AM – Marisse’s Office

Marisse nearly threw himself behind his desk. He pulled open his side drawer with urgency, digging beneath old cruise itineraries and dry-scented memos.

Nothing.

He checked his digital archives. External drives. Old backups from when he still used local storage.

Nothing.

Then finally, the memory hit. Rose’s secret Facebook account.

He fumbled through his browser history, then social media. But the profile was gone. Deleted.

Just then, a soft knock at the door.

“Sir?” It was Betita, his assistant, holding a folder. “Document for signature. Legal needs it by noon.”

“Come in,” Marisse said quickly. “Wait, Betita.” He looked up. “Do you remember… ever mentioning Rose’s secret Facebook account to me?”

Betita blinked. “You mean Rose Villamor, sir? No, of course, not…Why would you be interested about her secret Facebook account?”

“Nothing. I just…” He smiled, masking the urgency in his eyes. “Thought you did. It was probably someone else.”

She hesitated but continued. “But yeah, that account… it went viral after the Villamor maiden voyage. I remember because she posted all these behind-the-scenes photos and that soft launch cruise. People loved it. She became more popular to the public. Everyone was wondering, like, ‘Who is this woman?’”

Marisse’s voice dropped. “And?”

“Well, people started digging. And when she finally revealed her full name---boom. Headlines. And suitors. High society types. All the old-money bachelors started chasing after her. But she didn’t respond to any of them.”

“Why not?”

Betita gave a small shrug. “She kept posting these vague captions. Stuff like ‘Still hoping he’ll find me’ or ‘Some goodbyes are just open-ended hellos.’ It was obvious. She was waiting for someone. People called her ‘the desperate bride’ online.” Her face dropped. “It was cruel.”

Marisse’s chest twisted.

“And then?” he asked quietly.

“Then she posted one last thing… I still remember the caption: ‘He won’t come. So I will go. I have said goodbye the only way I knew how.’” Betita exhaled. “And 24 hours later, the whole account was deleted. Next, we heard she was marrying that Del Ríos guy.”

Marisse barely nodded. His hands felt cold. His mind—hollow.

When Betita left, he sat in the silence of his office for a long time.

No new memories. No updates. No floods of rewritten timelines.

Just the steady beating of shame in his ribcage.

*******

2:43 PM – Café Cielo, Manila City District

Marisse arrived early.

He had rehearsed his tone. Polished his words.
Cordial. Friendly. Professional. Detached enough to show respect, but still warm enough to feel… human.

When Rose arrived, she looked stunning draped in an ivory shawl, her hair loose now. Her presence still owned the room, even if her posture remained stiff.

She sat across from him with grace. But her eyes kept flicking toward the window. Watching. Waiting. Wary.

Marisse stirred his espresso. “So… how have you really been?”

She gave a tired smile. “Living. Adjusting. Planning events. Smiling for photos.”

“And are you… happy?”

She looked at him then—full in the face. “Does it matter?”

A pause.

Marisse leaned in, voice soft. “Why didn’t we reconnect, Rose? Why didn’t we… try?”

She exhaled a sharp, humorless laugh.

“You mean why didn’t you?”

His throat tightened.

Rose’s voice dipped. “I tried, Marisse. I wrote. I posted. I waited. And then… people turned me into a joke. A meme. 'The girl who got ghosted after a cruise.' I became entertainment.”

She leaned forward slightly, her voice trembling. “But I still waited. Until the day my father showed me the police report. The one about my stalker. The one you were trying to protect me from.”

Her voice cracked.

“I realized you weren’t running because of me… you were running from me.”

Marisse blinked. “No, that can’t… be possible…”

“Because by then,” she said coldly, “you had already read the posts. You saw them. And you stayed silent. For months. Years.”

“I thought… I thought if I engaged, it would risk my career, the investors---” The knowledge of the truth dawned on him like the light of an incoming train flickering from the horizon.

“There it is,” she snapped, eyes blazing. “You chose your ambition. You let me look like a fool.”

And then it hit him.

Like a freight train to the mind.

A sickening jolt through his skull as timelines crashed in.

Memory after memory.

Rose crying in his arms on the last day of the cruise.
The flash of police sirens.
Don Enrique telling him the stalker had been caught.
Rose’s post with the photo of a cruise ship window and the caption: “I can still see him, just not close enough to hold.”
His hands hovering over the keyboard, night after night… and never typing a word.

Marisse bolted from the table, crashing into the Men’s Room.

He stumbled into the nearest cubicle and vomited.

The weight of his failure wasn’t just guilt.

It was truth.

The kind you can’t unremembered once it’s burned into your brain.

After managing to steady himself, Marisse finally stepped out of the cubicle and stared at himself in the mirror.

This wasn’t the look of a man who lost someone.

This was the face of a man who threw her away.

And for the first time since stepping into this altered life, he wasn’t sure if it was fate that brought him back…

…or punishment.

*******

3:45 PM
Café Cielo, Manila

The icy porcelain sink offered little comfort. Marisse Rickarte splashed water on his face, clinging to the cold as though it could cleanse the torrent inside him. In the mirror, he didn’t look like the self-made cruise magnate, nor the golden boy of the Avalon merger.

He looked like a man watching the slow-motion collapse of a life that should’ve been his, but wasn’t.

"This is my reality now," he whispered to himself. "She’s married. She moved on. And I have to find a way to live with that."

That was when the door creaked, followed by an eerie buzz in the air. A familiar static.
Half of Jax's body poked through the frame, his glowing blue eyes wide with feigned innocence.

“Fuck sake, Jax!” Marisse nearly jumped out of his skin. “I told you I hate it when you do that.”

Jax shrugged. “And I told you, you react like a drama student during finals. You done crying in the sink, or…?”

Marisse scowled. “What do you want?”

Jax’s glow dimmed slightly. His tone sobered. “You might want to step out. There’s someone here you need to meet.”

As Marisse emerged, still drying his hands, the low hum of tension hit him like humidity before a typhoon.

There she was. Rose.

Standing in front of a towering man, one he recognized from the background checks he had combed through obsessively that morning.

Christopher Del Ríos.
Son of a shipping tycoon, suspected connections to political machinery and family-run rackets.
Muscles stuffed into an ill-fitting barong. Square jaw clenched. Eyes like cut stone.
He stood much too close.
Rose’s smile didn’t reach her eyes. And those eyes were wide. Too wide. The kind that silently screamed.

Marisse's instincts kicked in.

He moved toward them with practiced ease, tone cheerful and smooth like a diplomat in a minefield.
“Ah! You must be Mr. Del Ríos! Pleasure to finally meet you.”

He extended his hand, angling himself subtly between Christopher and Rose.

Christopher’s nostrils flared. He glanced at Marisse’s hand like it was diseased, then clasped it hard.
A bone-crushing squeeze followed, enough to make Marisse wince.

“And you are?” Christopher said, voice oily and lined with contempt.

“Marisse Rickarte. CEO of the Avalon Group.” Marisse chuckled, shaking out his hand as if it were all in good fun. “Just talking business over coffee. The signing ceremony’s tonight, your wife and I were discussing the finer details.”

He emphasized your wife like an olive branch and a landmine all at once.

Christopher didn’t blink. “And why does that need to be done in secret? In a café? Without my knowledge?”

Marisse kept his grin plastered on. “Oh, it wasn’t secret at all. I simply asked Mrs. Del Ríos if she had time. She kindly agreed. I figured you'd be busy, given your position.”

There was a dangerous silence.

Then Christopher let out a low grunt and turned to Rose, grabbing her arm in a way that was not hard enough to bruise, but not gently either.

“We’ll be attending that signing together,” he said to Marisse, voice flat. “Wouldn’t want any more… private conversations, would we?”

Marisse nodded, smile frozen. “Absolutely. We’d be honored to have you there.”

Christopher grunted again and tugged Rose toward the exit. She looked back…just once…and it wasn’t just sadness in her eyes.

It was fear.

Real fear.

*******