CHAPTER THIRTY TWO **ALEXANDER'S POV**

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

ALEXANDER'S POV

We flew back to Seattle on a Sunday.

Same flight this time. She'd booked it without mentioning she'd changed her mind about separate travel and I hadn't pointed it out. Just checked in beside her at the Reykjavik airport like it was the established thing, which it now was.

She slept for most of the flight with her head against my shoulder. I stayed awake and drew in the sketchbook and watched the clouds outside the window and thought about September and the program and what it meant to be starting something at thirty-two that should have started at twenty.

Better late than the alternative. We collected bags and walked to the car park and she drove because she'd left her car there and I hadn't.

Outside her building she pulled over but didn't cut the engine.

"Come up," she said.

"I should get back. Unpack. Check in with James about Tokyo."

She looked at me sideways. "You can do all of that tomorrow."

"Sophia."

"Alexander." She cut the engine. "Come up."

I came up.

Her apartment felt different after two weeks away. Cleaner somehow, the way spaces feel when you return to them with fresh eyes. She moved through it reopening windows and sorting mail and reestablishing herself in the space while I put our bags down and stood in the kitchen feeling the particular adjustment of return.

"Tea," she said. Not a question.

"Yes."

She made it and we sat at the counter together going through two weeks of accumulated messages with the unspoken agreement that this was the official reentry into real life. She dealt with three gallery emergencies that Yuna had managed competently but needed Sophia's sign-off. I dealt with the Tokyo update and a message from the UW program with pre-reading materials.

An hour of that and then she closed her laptop.

"Done," she said.

"Done," I agreed.

She looked at me across the counter. Something in her expression had shifted from the Iceland version, still open but carrying more weight. Real life had settled back around her shoulders in the twenty minutes since we'd walked through the door.

"You okay?" I asked.

"Yes. Just remembering what everything feels like again." She turned her cup. "Iceland was good."

"The best two weeks I've had."

"Don't be excessive."

"I'm being accurate." I held her gaze. "The best two weeks. Honestly."

She accepted that. "For me too."

We sat with that for a moment.

"I've been thinking about something," she said.

"Tell me."

"The foundation. The direction I want to take it." She stood and went to the window, the particular movement she made when she was working through something that needed space to be spoken. "I've been funding emerging artists in Seattle. That's been the focus. But after London and Paris I want to expand the scope. International residencies. Bringing artists from underfunded regions to work in established spaces."

"That's a significant expansion."

"I know. The infrastructure isn't there yet." She turned. "I need a board. Real people with real accountability, not just names on a letterhead." She paused. "I want you on it."

I looked at her. "Sophia."

"Not because you're with me. Because you have hospitality infrastructure in three countries, you understand international logistics, and you're starting an architecture program in September which means you'll have a developing understanding of space and how communities use it." She held my gaze. "Those are real qualifications."

"People will say I'm there because of our relationship."

"People said I was delusional and had me committed. I've stopped organizing my decisions around what people say." She came back to the counter. "You'd have to recuse yourself from any decisions involving Sterling adjacent properties. That's the only condition."

"Obviously."

"So yes or no."

I thought about it properly. Not about what it meant relationally but about what it actually required and whether I could do it well.

"Yes," I said. "On the condition that you hold me to the same standard as every other board member. No softening because of us."

"I would never soften a board position."

"I know. I'm saying it for myself. So I know what I'm signing up for."

She looked at me with clear eyes. "You'll be the hardest one to manage. You actually know things."

"Is that a problem?"

"It's an advantage." She picked up her cup. "I'll have the foundation lawyer send documents this week."

That was settled. I appreciated the way she operated. Decisions made cleanly and then moved past.

She came around the counter and stopped in front of me, close, looking up with an expression that had nothing to do with boards or foundations.

"I missed this apartment," she said quietly. "But I missed being somewhere new with you more."

I pulled her in and she came without resistance, her arms around my neck, her face tilting up. I kissed her and she pressed closer and I felt the two weeks of Iceland and the flight and the reentry into real life all settled into something grounded and right.

When she pulled back her eyes were soft.

"Stay tonight," she said. "Actually, stay. Not the sofa."

I looked at her.

"We've been together in Iceland for two weeks," she said simply. "The sofa is no longer a reasonable boundary."

"I know. I didn't want to assume."

"You're not assuming. I'm telling you." She held my gaze with the directness she had for things she'd decided clearly. "Stay."

"Yes," I said.

She stepped back and took my hand and I followed her and the apartment was quiet around us and the Seattle evening was doing its grey thing outside the window and none of that mattered at all.

Later, much later, she lay with her head on my chest and I looked at the ceiling of her bedroom while she traced absent patterns on my arm.

"Alexander."

"Yes."

"The foundation board meeting is the first Thursday of August."

I laughed. She felt it and made a sound that was almost a laugh too.

"Give me until morning before we're back to business," I said.

"That's fair." A pause. "The pre-reading for the program. Did you start it?"

"Sophia."

"Just asking."

"On the plane."

She lifted her head. "Really?"

"Don't act surprised. You told me not to wait for credentials to have opinions. I decided not to wait for September to start reading."

She looked at me in the low light with an expression I recognized now as the one she had when something landed exactly where she'd hoped it would.

"Good," she said.

She settled back against my chest and I put my arm around her and we lay in the quiet of her apartment while the city moved through its summer evening outside.

She fell asleep first.

I stayed awake a while longer, not thinking about anything specifically, just present in the room and the life that had been built carefully and honestly across a long strange road.

Two timelines. One ending. One that was just beginning properly.

I closed my eyes.