I didn’t even hesitate. “With everything.”
The space he led me into took the breath from my lungs.
It was a new wing—still smelling faintly of fresh paint and stone dust and possibility. White walls. High ceilings. Light designed not to dominate but to honor.
This wing was part of something larger—plans already in motion to buy out the entire block, to expand The Sanctuary beyond its original footprint. More rooms. More corridors. More space for what it was turning into. Not just a hidden refuge, but a living, breathing place big enough to hold the future Connor was quietly building—for the men who would come after him, and for me.
And then I saw them. On the walls?—
My photographs.
Not just the ones from my show.
But the ones that told the more intimate story:
Connor half in shadow, half in light.
Connor asleep, unguarded.
Connor watching me work.
The city folding around us like a held breath.
At the entrance, engraved simply:
THE SANCTUARY — EAST WING
MILA ZEE COLLECTION
Permanent Exhibition
My knees went weak.
“This isn’t …” I whispered. “Connor, this isn’t a gallery.”
“No,” he said quietly behind me. “It’s a promise.”
I turned, heart hammering.
“You taught me that safety isn’t the absence of danger,” he said. “It’s presence. It’s being chosen. It’s being allowed to exist without being managed or controlled.”
He stepped closer.
“This place will save men like me,” he continued. “But it needed a reason to be more than survival.”
Then he dropped to one knee.
The motion was so Connor—decisive, unembellished, absolute.
“Mila,” he said, steady as gravity, “you are my sanctuary. Marry me.”
I cried.
Not from shock. Not from fear.
From recognition.
From being seen so completely that resistance no longer made sense.
