“Lean,” he says. “I’ll spot you.”
We kick logistics around without letting them eat the moment—small venue, short ceremony, vows we’re already writing on illegal napkins, a camera only in Sophie’s hands, an after-party that’s basically pancakes at noon. Not urgent. Soon enough.
Another text from Sophie buzzes:I stashed something in your closet last week. Don’t yell. Love you.
Jason aims a very theatrical side-eye at the ceiling. “Definestashed,” he says.
“With Sophie?” I shrug. “Could be confetti. Could be a casserole. Could be a live duck.”
He tips his head toward the hallway like a game show host indicating the next challenge. “Do we investigate? Or do we let future us file the incident report?”
The monitor emits a small, contented crackle, a green okay. My body answers with a lift I recognize now for what it is: not adrenaline, not dread—anticipation. It blooms in the space where fear used to rehearse.
“Five-minute mission,” I decide, pushing off the floor and disentangling myself from the blanket. “Then we come back, eat the leftover spring roll, and practice sayingno commentin unison.”
Jason stands, stretches, offers me a hand like we haven’t already vowed to take it every time. I lace our fingers and feel the click of something that has learned how to fit.
“Hope, out loud,” he says as we start down the hall.
“Hope, on purpose,” I answer, and the words feel like turning on a light we paid for ourselves.
The closet smells like cedar blocks and new house—sawdust still in the hinge, cardboard in the corners. Sophie’s sticky note winks from the inside wall:DON’T PANIC.Which, obviously, is an invitation to panic.
Jason flips the light. It hiccups once, then settles into a soft glow that turns the hanging clothes into a small forest. Coats. Hoodies. The dress I wore to the press conference because it made me feel like a door that could hold. And at the far end, a garment bag I don’t recognize—white, zipped, the good kind with a structured bottom.
“Stashed,” he says, reverent, like we found treasure instead of potential chaos.
I touch the edge of the bag and feel the faint rasp of plastic under my fingertips. “If a duck jumps out, we’re keeping it,” I warn.
“Deal,” he says, stepping back just enough to let me be the one who opens it, just close enough that his arm brushes mine like a promise that whatever’s inside is already ours.
The zipper resists for an inch like it needs to be convinced. Then it gives with a soft sound I feel in my teeth. White fabric spills forward into my hands in a slow waterfall—cool, a little slippery, heavier than it looks. I catch it instinctively, palms full of satin and breath I forgot to take.
It’s a dress. Not a generic internet dress.Mydress—how?—familiar in ways I haven’t earned yet. Clean lines, a neckline that knows my collarbones, a skirt that skims instead of shouts. No rhinestones. No spectacle. The kind of white that looks like quiet snow under streetlights.
A note is pinned at the strap in Sophie’s handwriting:Tried not to cry. Failed. Alterations gift certificate in the envelope. Love, S.
My pulse does a small, ridiculous sprint. Not panic. Not dread. The other thing. The one that has started visiting more lately without asking me to prove I deserve it.
Jason breathes out a sound that is almost a laugh and almost something older. “Riley,” he says, and my name does that trick where it folds the room down to its right size. “That’s—” He doesn’t finish. He doesn’t need to.
I hold the hanger up and the dress unfurls, catching the closet light like it’s been waiting to be a part of it. A hem brushes my shin. The fabric cools the heat in my palms; the weight wakes my shoulders. I picture it with my boots because I’m me, and then with bare feet on the rug, and then with skates on a quiet sheet of ice under a rink’s midnight lights because I’m allowed to imagine both.
“Try it?” Jason asks, then immediately corrects himself. “Only if you want to. No timeline. No…optics.” The last word is gentle, like he’s dismantling a trap before I step in it.
“I…want to see it,” I admit, surprised at how sure that sounds. “Just—close.”
He slips into the bedroom and pulls the door mostly shut, leaving a soft wedge of light like a held breath. I step out of sweats and into satin, steadying my balance with a hand on the shelf, careful not to wake Oliver with a hanger squeak. The fabric sighs up my legs and settles at my hips like a thing choosing me back.
“Okay,” I call, and he opens the door the rest of the way. The mirror on the closet door throws back a version of me I recognize—trainer’s shoulders, new softness at the edges, eyes that have watched rooms for danger and are learning to watch them for light.
Jason’s mouth—stupid, brave—goes soft. He crosses the threshold like the floor might give and stops an arm’s length away because he knows that’s where this moment breathes best. “Hi,” he says, awed.
“Hi,” I say, and my voice shakes once and then steadies. The monitor in the living room crackles a soft, contented exhale, like a third witness signing the page.
I gather the skirt in my hands and feel the future rise, tangible as fabric, close enough to touch.
Chapter 34
