Chapter 29

Friday

Friday arrives faster than I expect, and by six thirty I've changed my outfit three times, a fact I refuse to admit out loud to Elena, who watches from my bed with an expression of barely contained amusement.

"You've worn the green dress twice already tonight." She gestures at the pile of discarded options scattered across the room. "I think that's your answer."

"It's not a statement of anything." I smooth down the fabric, studying my reflection with more scrutiny than the occasion probably warrants. "It's just a dress."

"Sure." Elena's smile widens, but she doesn't push further, simply reaching over to adjust the clasp of my necklace before I can protest.

Noah arrives at exactly seven, dressed simply, no tailored suit tonight, just dark slacks and a button down that makes him look more like the version of himself Elena once described from before his father died, before the pressure hardened him into someone else entirely.

"You look beautiful." His voice carries none of the old performance, just quiet honesty.

"Thank you." I glance past him toward the car waiting in the drive. "Where are we going?"

"Somewhere I used to like, before everything got complicated." He opens the car door for me, and I settle into the seat, watching the estate grow smaller behind us as we pull away.

The restaurant turns out to be a small, unassuming place tucked into a quiet street I've never noticed before, warm lighting, mismatched chairs, the kind of establishment that couldn't be further from the glittering ballrooms and marble lobbies that have defined the last year of my life.

"This isn't what I expected." I slide into the booth across from him, studying the handwritten menu with genuine curiosity.

"I used to come here in college, before any of this." Noah glances around the space with something like nostalgia softening his features. "Before Frost Corporation, before the pressure to be someone worthy of inheriting it. I haven't been back in years."

"Why here, tonight."

"Because I wanted you to see a version of me that existed before I let all of it consume everything else." He meets my eyes across the table, unguarded in a way that still catches me off balance sometimes. "I don't know if that version is still in there somewhere, but I'd like the chance to find out. With you, if you're willing."

We order simply, nothing extravagant, and for a while the conversation stays easy, careful, circling around safer topics, Lila's growing love of piano, the consumer division's recent success, small updates on Ivy's transition into temporary care while the custody proceedings work through family court.

It's Noah who finally steers the conversation toward harder ground, setting down his fork with visible deliberation.

"I've been in therapy," he says, the admission clearly costing him something. "Since the gala. Since the results came back on Lila's paternity and I realized how badly I'd let fear control every decision I made for years."

"That's significant." I study him carefully, searching for any trace of performance in the statement and finding none. "What made you start?"

"Watching you rebuild everything on your own terms made me realize how much of my life I spent reacting instead of choosing." He turns his water glass slowly between his hands. "I grew up watching my father disappear into work the same way I did, watching my mother orchestrate everyone's lives from behind the scenes because she never trusted anyone to make the right choices on their own. I told myself I was different, but I was just repeating the same patterns with slightly different justifications."

"And therapy's helped with that?"

"It's helped me understand why I pushed you away every time you got close enough to actually matter." His voice is quieter now, rawer. "I convinced myself for years that needing you made me weak, that love was something my father used as an excuse to be reckless, something my mother manipulated to control outcomes. I built my entire identity around never being vulnerable to either version of that. And in doing that, I made you carry the entire weight of loving both of us, while I gave you almost nothing back."

I sit with his words for a long moment, letting them settle without rushing to fill the silence the way I once might have, desperate to smooth over any discomfort between us.

"I spent four years believing if I just loved you enough, worked hard enough at being patient and understanding, you'd eventually choose me back." My voice comes out steadier than I expect. "I don't think I even realized how much of myself I sacrificed chasing that until I finally stopped."

"I know." His eyes hold mine, steady despite the vulnerability written plainly across his face. "I'm not asking you to go back to being that version of yourself, Amara. I don't want that version back. I want to know the woman sitting across from me now, the one who built a business from nothing, who stood in a boardroom and refused to be silenced, who told me on the phone last week exactly what she needed from me if I wanted any chance at this."

"And if getting to know her means we end up somewhere different than where we started?" I ask carefully. "If this doesn't end with us back together, exactly how it used to be?"

"Then I'll have still learned more about actually loving someone than I ever managed in four years of marriage." His voice carries quiet conviction. "I'm not chasing you to recreate what we had, Amara. I'm trying to earn something entirely new, built on actually seeing you, however long that takes, whatever it turns out to look like in the end."

Something in his words settles differently than anything he's said over the past year, less like a man trying to win back what he lost, more like someone genuinely willing to build from scratch.

"I'm not ready to call this anything yet," I say finally, honestly. "But I'm willing to keep having dinners like this. Slowly. Without any promises attached to it."

"That's more than enough." A small, genuine smile crosses his face, the kind I remember from rare, precious moments early in our relationship, before the weight of everything else buried it. "Slowly works for me."

We finish the meal talking about smaller things again, easier things, and by the time he drops me back at the estate, walking me to the door with careful, respectful distance, something in my chest feels lighter than it has in longer than I can remember.

"Goodnight, Amara." He lingers at the bottom of the steps, hands in his pockets.

"Goodnight, Noah." I pause at the door, glancing back at him one final time. "Same time next week?"

The smile that breaks across his face is answer enough before he even speaks the words.