"I love you," she whispered, already half-asleep.
"I love you too," I replied, pressing a kiss to her hair.
Within minutes, we were both asleep.
Morning arrived with sunlight streaming through the hotel curtains and the soft buzz of my phone on the nightstand. I reached for it carefully, not wanting to wake Vivienne, and saw several messages from Roy about meetings that needed to be rescheduled.
"What time is it?" Vivienne asked, her voice muffled against my chest.
"Just after eight," I said, setting thephone aside to run my fingers through her hair. "I have some work I need to handle this morning. Conference calls, email responses. Nothing that can't be done remotely."
"You could work from my parents' house," Vivienne suggested, propping herself up on one elbow to look at me. "Mom will be at school until four, so you'd have the place to yourself. Dad and I will bring lunch back with us from the farmer's market."
The idea of spending the morning in her childhood home, surrounded by the evidence of her life before we met, surprised me with how much I liked that thought.
"Are you sure your parents wouldn't mind?"
"They'd love it," Vivienne said with a smile. "Especially after yesterday. It'll show them we're serious about being part of each other's lives."
An hour later, we were in the car heading back to her parents' house, both of us showered and dressed, the morning stretching ahead with the comfortable routine of an established couple rather than the chaos of the previous day.
We were about halfway there when my phone rang, and as I was pulling it out, Vivienne’s started going off as well. I glanced at the screen—Kane—while Vivienne frowned at hers.
"Roosevelt High," she said, her voice tight with surprise.
We answered our respective calls, and I watched Vivienne's face as she listened to whoever was talking to her.
"Julian?" Kane's voice came through my phone.
"Everything OK?"
“I’m so sorry, I thought it was Scarlett. But the photo with Vivienne and Raphael was taken by a photographer who was hired by Raphael himself. The photo was released this morning. I didn’t even think to check his connections."
I closed my eyes, feeling the weight of my failure to protect Vivienne from this mess. "Is there anything we can do?"
"I'm working on damage control now," Kane said. "But the photo's out there. We can't put that particular genie back in the bottle. It also turns out he’s done this in the past to other women as well. Not that it can fix the photos that are already leaked, I was going to make things a little tricky for him right now, but it turns out I’m a little too late. His previous lady friend did some damage that he won’t be recovering from anytime soon.”
As I hung up, I turned to Vivienne, hermood completely shifted from the excitement of spending the morning with her father. I was ready to apologize, ready to promise I'd fix this somehow.
"I understand," Vivienne said finally, her voice carefully controlled. "Thank you for letting me know."
She ended the call and looked at me with a mixture of disappointment and resignation.
"I've been let go," she said quietly. "The photo of me and Rafael was published this morning. They said my conduct is incompatible with their institutional values."
I felt rage surge through me, hot and immediate. Eight years of excellent teaching, dismissed because of a misleading photograph.
But she was looking at me with an expression that wasn't devastation—it was thoughtful consideration.
"I'm sorry," I said anyway. "This is my fault. If you'd never met me—"
"Then I'd still be teaching at a school that cares more about appearances than actual education," Vivienne interrupted. "Julian, I'm disappointed, yes. But I'm not going to let this ruin my time here with my dad. Or with you."
"You're not upset?"
"I'm upset that they didn't even ask for my side of the story," Vivienne said. "I'm upset that eight years of excellent work means nothing compared to one out-of-context photo. But I'm not devastated. Maybe this is the universe telling me it's time for something new."
I studied her face, looking for signs of denial or false bravado, but found only genuine acceptance.
