Penn stepped inside like she was afraid the whole thing might dissolve if she breathed too hard.
“This,” she whispered, eyes wide, voice barely there, “can’t be real.”
I wrapped my arms around her waist from behind and bent to her neck, my mouth close enough that she could feel the words before she heard them.
“It’s yours, Peach,” I said. “Every inch. Every desk. Every sky-lit dream. You get to build an empire here. Your empire.”
She shuddered. Not fear. Release.
Carrie wiped her eyes aggressively from across the space. “Okay, well. I live here now. I’ll sleep on a couch. Or a shelf. Or in the damn air vents.”
Penn laughed and cried at the same time. I kissed her temple, slow, grounding.
Her world was beginning.
Her story was blooming.
She didn’t know it yet, but this was only the beginning of what I had planned for her.
The air in Penn’s new tower smelled like beginnings. Fresh timber. Clean walls. Vanished echoes. The first heartbeat of a place not yet lived in.
I watched her take it all in. The way her eyes traced the windows, the soft shadows, the antique desk I’d hunted down because months ago, half-asleep and half-broken, she’d murmured that words felt safer when they landed somewhere old and solid.
She let out a breath like her ribs were unlocking for the first time in years.
I could’ve wrapped my arms around the whole city in that moment.
We walked the length of the building, our footsteps mapping out future chapters. I showed her the office I’d carved out for myself, tucked off to the side. Nothing loud. Nothing demanding. Just a place where I could exist near her world. Where shipping files and manuscripts could share the same air.
It felt right.
It felt inevitable.
When Penn pressed her palm to the tall window facing Carrie’s glass tower across the road, I stepped in behind her, close enough to warm her spine.
“She saw you,” Penn whispered, eyes still on the reflection. “Carrie saw you watching me.”
“Good,” I said. “Then she knows you’re not walking into this alone.”
Penn leaned her forehead against the glass. Her leg bounced, nerves humming just beneath the surface. I laid my hand over her thigh, stilling it.
She didn’t flinch. She didn’t pull away. She breathed. It felt like trust.
We sat at the long wooden table that would one day host manuscripts, coffee rings, deadlines, laughter. For now, it held two takeaway containers of noodles Carrie had ordered in dramatic concern.
Penn picked at hers more than she ate.
I watched everything. The flicker behind her eyes. The way her shoulders tensed, then loosened, then tightened again.
“Talk to me,” I said. Gentle, but not soft.
Her throat worked. Her fingers twisted the chopsticks into a small wooden cross she didn’t realize she was making.
“I have to meet him,” she said. “Blake. I need to say everything I never said. Everything he never let me say.”
My pulse tightened, but I kept my voice steady. “You don’t owe him another second of your breath.”
“I know.” Her voice shook, but her spine straightened. “But I owe myself the truth. And I owe Gracie the truth. The real ending. Not the one he forced into me.”
