I sit on the ottoman and place the first pages on the coffee table. “They’re for the Ember House expansion. Not blueprints. I’ve been working through how the rooms could function and how the whole wing should feel.”
Blake sets his glasses more firmly on his nose and draws the first page closer. He spends several minutes moving between the floor plan and the color studies before pointing to the widening hallway outside the communal kitchen.
“You changed the scale here.”
“I didn’t want someone leaving a private room to walk straight into a crowd. The space opens in stages, and the smaller seating areas give them somewhere to stop before joining everyone else.”
Blake traces the curved line with the capped end of his pen. “The exits stay visible from every stopping point.”
“That was intentional.”
He turns to the suite pages and asks why some window seats face the garden while others are angled toward the doors. Iexplain that privacy means different things to different people, and that the final rooms shouldn’t force the same version of comfort on everyone.
Blake reaches for the pen in his pocket, then pauses. “Do you mind?”
“Go ahead.”
He begins making notes in the margins, asking about the lighting controls, the communal kitchen, and whether the suites could support more than one arrangement without changing the structure. His questions move quickly, but he waits for my answers instead of treating the sketches as something he can take over.
“If we build a planning tool,” he says, drawing a small rectangle beside one of the suite pages, “residents could choose between several room layouts before construction begins. Seating position, lighting level, where the bed or nest faces.”
“Those can’t be the only choices.”
Blake looks at me.
“There needs to be a way to reject every preset and explain what they want instead. Otherwise, we’re still deciding which versions of comfort they’re allowed to choose.”
He crosses out the bottom of his sketch and redraws it with an open field beneath the room options. “Like this?”
I lean closer and adjust the label. “Less technical.”
Blake changes it again, and we stay over the pages longer than either of us intends. His pen moves between my drawings while I correct his wording, our shoulders pressed together above the coffee table.
“I missed this,” I say when we finally reach the last page. “Working beside you without one of us checking your pulse or arguing about how long you’ve been standing.”
Blake lays the pen across the portfolio and turns toward me. “I missed you disagreeing with me about something that wasn’t keeping me alive.”
I smile as he cups the side of my neck and draws me into a kiss. It begins softly, but he keeps me close when I start to pull away, his thumb moving beneath my jaw.
“Show Luca,” he says when we separate. “Not tonight if he’s already carrying too much, but don’t leave these hidden in your office.”
“I won’t.”
The front door opens while I’m returning the pages to the portfolio. Luca is still on the phone in the foyer, reminding Josie that the open evening is less than two weeks away and that Blossom wants every training employee paired with an established staff member throughout the event. He tells her they’ll review the guest list, resident permissions, and restricted areas together before anyone arrives.
He pauses while Josie speaks, then tells her Blossom will review the Thompson paperwork with her tomorrow before either of them speaks to the resident again. The conversation sounds ordinary until Luca tells her that the Thompson paperwork doesn't confirm whether a Welfare Board investigation can extend to a pack that supported bite removal. He says Blossom will check the legal guidance before they add anything to the intake notes.
Blake looks toward the foyer, then back at me. He doesn’t tell me what to think, and I don’t offer him a conclusion.
Later, after dinner, I take the legal pad from behind the flour jar and add the date beneath the earlier entries.
March 16: Josie asked whether the Welfare Board could investigate a pack that supported bite removal. Luca said the question came from the Thompson case.
I read the four entries once before closing the pad. Victor’s call, Luca’s funding, Maceo’s attention, and Josie’s questions may have nothing to do with one another. Writing them down doesn’t make them evidence. It only keeps me from changing the details later to match whatever I eventually decide they mean.
I return the pad behind the flour jar and leave the portfolio in the office. Blake has seen it now. Luca will see it when there is enough room for the designs to feel like a possibility instead of another expense he has to solve.
7
