He stepped back then, giving me space, but not before his hand brushed mine—light, accidental, electric.
As he walked away, I watched him go, my mind already racing ahead to the night. To music and movement and the way his hands might feel when there was nothing left to pretend.
This wasn’t just nostalgia.
It was the beginning of something I wasn’t sure I was ready for—but already didn’t want to stop.
10
WYATT
The driver answered on the first ring.
"Mr. Dane. Where can I pick you up?"
I gave him Mama P's address and stood on the porch waiting, watching Charleston wake up properly. Mid-morning sun warming the cobblestones, tourists already out with their cameras and iced coffees clutched like lifelines, the city settling into its rhythm.
The black SUV pulled up five minutes later, silent and efficient.
I climbed in without a word, and we drove.
No vocal tour. Just the hum of the engine and the city sliding past my window like scenes from a movie I was watching instead of living in. Old buildings and narrow streets, iron gates twisted into elaborate patterns that must've taken months to forge, palmetto trees swaying in the breeze, everything painted in that soft golden light that made Charleston look like a postcard someone had actually lived in and loved.
I was getting used to it. The slow pace. The way time seemed to bend here, stretching and contracting depending on whereyou stood and what you were looking at. But I still preferred Texas. Wide open spaces where you could see the horizon coming from miles away. Room to breathe without history pressing in from all sides, without the weight of centuries telling you how to exist.
We left downtown, the architecture shifting from historic to modern, then back again like the city couldn't make up its mind. Charleston was like that—pockets of old and new existing side by side, refusing to choose, insisting both could be true at once.
The SUV turned onto a private road, trees forming a canopy overhead, dappled sunlight hitting the windshield in shifting patterns that made me squint. Then the gates appeared. Tall. Iron. Imposing without being aggressive. The kind that saidprivatewithout needing signs or threats.
They opened automatically as we approached, smooth and silent.
Dominion Hall rose ahead of us like something out of another era—or maybe the future, it was hard to tell. Massive didn't cover it. Multiple stories of stone and glass, columns flanking the entrance like sentries, windows reflecting the morning sky back at itself in fractured light. The architecture was traditional Southern—grand without being gaudy, powerful without needing to shout—but there was something modern in the lines, something deliberate about the way it all fit together.
And on either side, construction. Heavy equipment sitting idle in the morning heat. Steel frames rising from concrete foundations. New wings being added to something already huge, expanding outward like the place was growing in real time, like it knew exactly where it was going and couldn't get there fast enough.
I wondered how new it all was. How long Dominion Hall had existed, and what exactly it was becoming.
The SUV pulled up to the entrance, and before I could reach for the door handle, someone was already walking toward me with purpose.
Micah.
He looked different in daylight—less mysterious, more real. Mid-thirties, fit, moving with that easy confidence that came from knowing exactly who you were and not needing to prove it to anyone. Dark hair cut short and practical, sharp eyes that missed nothing, a smile that suggested he found most things amusing but took the right things seriously.
I stepped out into the heat, and he extended his hand.
"Wyatt Dane. Good to finally meet you, properly."
His grip was firm. Professional. The kind that saidI respect youwithout words. "Micah."
"Thanks for coming," he said, gesturing toward the entrance with one hand. "You need anything? Coffee? Water? Something stronger?"
"I'm loaded up for the day," I said. "Why don't we get down to business?"
He grinned, something approving flickering in his expression. "Yeah. You sound like us."
I didn't ask what he meant, but I felt it—the weight of something unsaid, something I was supposed to pick up on but hadn't yet. Like there was a language being spoken underneath the words and I was only catching half of it.
He led me inside.
