Someday, I told him that night in his bed. Someday is enough.
That someday is here, and I can’t wait to tell Drake I’ve tossed my birth control pills. A smile slips across my mouth.
We pull into the underground garage at Redthorne Holdings as the sun begins its descent toward the horizon, painting the sky in shades of amber and rose. Drake leads me to the private elevator, his hand clasped firmly around mine. His thumb traces patterns on my knuckles that make my skin tingle with awareness.
"Close your eyes." His voice is rough with anticipation.
"Drake, what are you planning?"
"Trust me." He presses a kiss to my temple. "Just this once."
I close my eyes and let him guide me through the elevator ride, down a hallway, around corners I cannot see. The familiar sounds of Redthorne surround me. The hum of climate control. The distant murmur of voices. The soft click of my heels against marble floors.
We stop. I hear the whisper of a door opening, feel Drake's hands settle on my shoulders from behind.
"Open your eyes, little rose."
I open them, and the world falls away.
The space before me stretches vast and gleaming, two entire floors of Redthorne Holdings transformed into something that steals my breath and stops my heart. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves line the walls, already half-filled with volumes I recognize from catalogs and wish lists I never expected anyone to see. Reading nooks are tucked into corners, draped with soft throws and surrounded by lamps that cast warm pools of light. A reception desk curves gracefully near the entrance, sleek and modern and topped with a vase of fresh roses.
And on the wall behind it, in letters that catch the fading sunlight like captured stars, a name.
Ember House.
The tears come before I can stop them, hot and silent, streaming down my cheeks as I struggle to comprehend what I am seeing. My dream. My impossible, buried, sacrificed dream, made real and solid and tangible in chrome and mahogany and thousands upon thousands of books.
"Drake." His name breaks on my lips. "What did you do?"
"I built you a publishing house. The bookshelves will eventually hold a copy or a hundred of every book you help an author publish, but for now, I put some of your favorites there to encourage you." His voice is rough against my ear, his arms wrapping around me from behind as I stand frozen in the doorway of my own impossible future.
"You’ll have the best editors. The most talented designers. A marketing team that knows fantasy and romance and every other genre you've ever wanted to champion. It's yours, Katriana. All of it."
I turn in his arms and find his face, cupping his jaw in my palms and searching his gray eyes for any sign that this is not real. That I will wake up any moment in my cramped apartment with the leaky ceiling and the broken coffee maker and the crushing weight of Victor's debt pressing me into the mattress.
But Drake's eyes hold only love. Love and pride and a fierce determination that takes my breath away.
"Because stories are sparks," he says softly, quoting the words I confessed to him months ago in a moment of vulnerability I never expected him to remember. "And the right book can set your whole world on fire."
I kiss him. Hard and deep and desperate, pouring every ounce of gratitude and love and wonder into the press of my lips against his. He groans into my mouth and pulls me closer, his hands fisting in the fabric of my blouse, his body solid and warm and utterly mine.
When we finally break apart, we are both breathing hard.
"I can't believe you did this." I wipe my cheeks with the back of my hand, smearing mascara, not caring in the slightest. "This must have cost a fortune."
"Worth every penny." He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. "Worth everything I have, to see that look on your face."
I laugh, the sound wet and broken and full of joy. "You're insane. You know that, right? Completely, certifiably insane."
"About you." He kisses the tip of my nose. "Only about you."
I turn back to the space that is somehow, impossibly, mine. The bookshelves and the reading nooks and the name on the wallthat represents everything I buried five years ago when survival became my only priority.
Ember House. My dream, resurrected by a man who saw me struggling and chose to lift me up instead of hold me down.
"There's one more thing." Drake reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a small velvet box.
My heart stutters. "Drake, you already proposed. I already said yes. We're already engaged."
