Dane is there before the door finishes closing.
He doesn’t ask. He just opens his arms, and I fall into them like gravity finally remembered me.
“I stayed,” I whisper into his chest.
“I know,” he says. “I saw.” And then “I left,” I say. “I didn’t break.”
His hand settles at the small of my back, grounding. Reverent. Like he understands this moment is holy.
“I saw,” he says. “You were brave.”
I don’t feel brave.
But I feel free.
His apartment is all angles and windows and soft light that never quite commits to brightness. Wellington hums outside like it knows something is about to happen. Traffic sighs. Wind fingers the balcony rail. Somewhere below, a siren lifts and fades, the city clearing its throat.
I’m padding barefoot through his bedroom in one of his shirts, sleeves rolled, buttons mismatched because he fastened it for me with distracted hands and we laughed too hard to fix it. Dane’s cologne drying warm on my skin.
My hair is damp from the shower, water darkening the collar at my neck. The dress hangs over the back of a chair, waiting. Shoes lined neatly by the door. Clutch, lipstick, nerves all scattered across the dresser like evidence.
Dane is already dressed from the waist up, crisp shirt, sleeves rolled, tie loose around his neck. He looks devastating and entirely undone at the same time. He keeps reaching for me as Imove, brushing my arm, my waist, my spine, like he’s reassuring himself I haven’t evaporated under the weight of tomorrow.
“You’re stalling,” he says gently.
“I’m savoring,” I counter.
He smiles and steps in, hands warm as he tugs the shirt over my head and replaces it with the dress. He turns me toward the mirror, slow, reverent, like this is something ceremonial instead of practical.
The fabric slides down my body, cool, deliberate. It fits like intention.
He crouches in front of me, suit jacket abandoned over the chair, focus narrowing as he works the hem between his fingers.
“You’re going to trip,” he says, already reaching for the pins, “if you don’t let me fix this.”
“I won’t,” I say, lifting my chin. “I’m graceful.”
He snorts softly. “You walked into a glass door yesterday.”
“That door attacked me.”
He glances up then, pin held carefully between his fingers, smiling in that quiet way that always feels like a hand at my spine. The smile he saves for rooms without witnesses. The one that says you are safe here, you always were.
He finishes pinning, presses a kiss to my knee like punctuation, and stands.
There is a mirror in the hall, tall and narrow, and when I catch us in it I have to stop breathing for a second.
We look… settled. Not polished. Not perfect. But aligned. Like furniture finally arranged the right way around a window.
Dane straightens his cufflinks, glances at me. “You ready?”
I think of Blake’s face in the café mirror. The way his mouth trembled when the last line landed. The way he said my name like it was a place he’d lost in a fire.
I think of the presses starting. Of ink and paper and truth leaving the building without me.
For the first time all day, my breath settles.
“No,” I say honestly.
