I turned my head, looking at him over my shoulder. “You’ll be there?”
“Probably complaining that you stole the blanket.”
“You wrap yourself around me like a furnace and then accuse me of theft.”
“You’re very convincing in your sleep.”
“I’m convincing awake, too.”
His smile softened. “Yeah. You are.”
For a second, the studio went quiet around us.
The city moved beyond the windows. A bus sighed at the curb. Somewhere upstairs, the neighbor’s dog gave two offended barks at absolutely nothing. The light shifted over the drafting table, warm and gold, turning the permits almost honey-colored beneath my hands.
Something moved through me that I couldn’t name. I pressed my lips together. Then, quietly, I laughed.
Mine.
There were still hard days. Sometimes I saw a black sedan that looked too much like Callum’s and I was already halfway to the curb before my mind caught up. Sometimes a client interrupted me in a meeting and I had to remind myself I was allowed to keep speaking. Sometimes I found old versions of myself in strange places: folded into a blazer I no longer wore, caught in the scent of a hotel lobby, hiding behind the instinct to apologize when I had done nothing wrong.
But the old version of me didn’t make the decisions anymore.
She could rest.
I had it from here.
Finn reached around me and picked up one of the pencils from the table. “You forgot something.”
“I did not.”
“You did.”
He leaned over the title block, wrote carefully beneath the consultant section, and slid the paper back toward me.
I looked down.
Finn Morrow — Structural Consultant
I tried not to smile and failed.
“You added yourself to my project?”
“I was invited.”
“By whom?”
“The building.”
“The building invited you.”
“It has excellent taste.”
I laughed, and he kissed the side of my head like the sound pleased him.
Then his hand brushed mine.
There was something different in the touch. A pause. A shift in the silence that made the small hairs on my arms stand up.
