Page 3 of His By Contract
The phone rang once. Twice. Three times.
Georgia’s stomach dropped. She opened her email, the blue light harsh against her face in the darkness. Three new messages waited in her inbox, their timestamps just minutes apart. The familiar names of clients she’d thought were friends glared back at her.
“After careful consideration, we must withdraw our offer…”
“Due to recent developments…”
“We regret to inform you…”
The words swam together, each rejection letter another nail in the coffin of everything she’d worked for. She shoved the phone back into her pocket and started walking, her feet carrying her through empty streets. Each step felt heavier than the last, like chains wrapped around her ankles.
The city lights blurred around her. A couple passed, laughing about their dinner plans. A taxi honked. Life went on while her world crumbled, the casual indifference of strangers somehow more painful than direct cruelty.
Her mother’s medical bills flashed through her mind. The rent due next week. The fabric she’d already ordered for next month’s projects. The way her mother’s face would fall when Georgia told her the treatments might have to wait.
Georgia wrapped her arms around herself, but the cold had settled deeper than skin. It reached into her bones, into the hollow space where her dreams used to live. Everything she’d built, every connection she’d fought for, every sleepless nightspent hunched over her sewing machine—gone. Destroyed by one spilled glass of wine and a woman who wielded power like a weapon.
She’d never felt so small. So powerless. So utterly alone.
Georgia’s key scraped against the lock of her apartment door. Three tries before her trembling hands steadied enough to open it. The darkness inside matched her mood. Empty, cold, suffocating.
She flicked on the lights, illuminating her makeshift studio. Fabric draped across every surface, half-finished designs hung like ghosts on the clothing rack. A red cocktail dress she’d stayed up three nights to complete. A bridal gown with intricate beadwork she’d planned to showcase next season. All of them worthless now. All that passion and creativity suddenly reduced to expensive scraps.
Her fingers traced the silk of an azure blue evening gown. The material had cost two weeks’ worth of groceries, but she’d convinced herself it would be worth it. That this piece would finally catch the right person’s eye, open the right doors. The silk felt cool against her fingertips, still beautiful, still perfect, even if no one would ever see it now.
The fabric slipped through her fingers as she sank onto her threadbare couch. Bills covered her coffee table: rent past due, utilities on final notice. She’d been counting on those wedding dress commissions to catch up. Those commissions had been her lifeline, her salvation.
Georgia stared at her reflection in the dark window. The girl who’d dreamed of dressing celebrities, of seeing her designs in magazines, looked so young now. So naive. That girl hadbelieved talent and hard work were enough, that the world would recognize genuine passion. How foolish she’d been.
For the first time in years, she felt something close to despair. But she wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t break. Georgia Phillips had survived worse than this, even if right now she couldn’t remember how.
CHAPTER 2
The next evening, Georgia sat cross-legged on her living room floor, surrounded by a fortress of sketches and unpaid bills. A sharp ping cut through the silence. Her stomach twisted as she reached for the phone, knowing what waited for her. The screen glowed in the dim light, casting shadows across the papers scattered around her. The numbers blurred together: past due, final notice, urgent payment required. Just like the last dozen notifications that had slowly chipped away at her resolve.
Memorial Hospital: Your balance of $52,892 is now thirty days past due. Additional fees have been applied.
The new total made her chest tighten. Fifty-two thousand dollars. The number burned into her retinas, mocking every sacrifice she’d made to keep her mother’s treatments going. How had it grown so quickly? It seemed only yesterday the total had been manageable, or at least something she could pretend to manage.
Her email notification chimed. The hospital administrator’s message was cold, clinical:
Dear Ms. Phillips,
This serves as final notice regarding your mother’s outstanding medical balance. Without immediate payment arrangements, we cannot continue providing nonemergency care. Treatment will be suspended effective end of business day Friday.
Please contact our billing department to discuss payment options.
Regards,
Memorial Hospital Administration
Georgia’s hands trembled as she set the phone down. Three days. They were giving her three days to come up with money she didn’t have, couldn’t borrow, and had no way of earning. Not now, not after Celeste had destroyed her reputation with a single, calculated move. The memory of that night burned in her mind: the spilled wine, Celeste’s icy glare, and the whispered condemnations that followed her out of the gala, sealing her fate.
The walls of her tiny apartment seemed to close in. Dress forms loomed in the shadows, draped in half-finished projects she’d never complete. Fabric worth thousands lay useless, an investment that would never pay off. Her mother’s life hung by a thread, and she sat powerless, surrounded by the wreckage of her dreams. All those nights she’d promised her mother they’d get through this together now felt like cruel lies.
Georgia’s fingers shook as she logged into her bank account. The screen loaded, revealing a balance that made her stomach drop:$247.13. Not even enough for groceries, let alone her mother’s medical bills. She’d been ignoring how quickly the number had been dwindling, hoping somehow things would turn around before she hit bottom.
She opened her email, scrolling through a sea of rejections. Her chest tightened with each one, the weight of disappointment becoming almost physical.
