CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR **SOPHIA**

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

**SOPHIA**

March arrived and Catherine was sentenced to five years.

I heard it from Rebecca at nine in the morning and said thank you and hung up and went back to the exhibition mock-up I'd been reviewing. Yuna looked at me across the table and didn't ask. I appreciated that.

By noon I'd told Marcus, who went quiet in the way he did when he felt something too large for immediate words. By two I'd told Isabelle, who cried briefly and then apologized for crying, which made me almost cry, which I didn't let happen because I had a four o'clock artist meeting.

Alexander texted at three. *Heard about the sentencing. Are you alright?*

I thought about the question properly rather than giving him the automatic fine.

*Yes,* I wrote back. *Genuinely. Come over tonight if you want.*

He arrived at seven with the coffee beans again and takeout from a place in Capitol Hill I hadn't tried. He set everything on the counter and looked at me once, assessing without making it obvious, and then started unpacking containers without asking whether I wanted to talk about it.

I loved that about him. That he'd learned the difference between support and pressure.

We ate on the sofa, television on low, neither of us really watching it. His arm was along the back behind me and I was leaning into his side in a way that had become natural over the last few weeks without either of us marking when exactly it happened.

"Five years," I said eventually.

"Yes."

"It's less than she deserves and more than I expected." I looked at the ceiling. "I thought I'd feel more when it was done."

"What do you feel?"

"Finished." I turned the word over. "Like a door closed. Not dramatically. Just quietly."

He pressed a kiss to the top of my head without comment. Simple and warm and entirely without agenda.

I turned to look at him. He was already watching me with that steady attention he'd developed, the kind that didn't need anything back.

"I want to tell you something," I said.

"Alright."

"In the first life, the night before I died, I overheard you tell Victoria that marrying me was the most calculated decision you'd ever made." I said it plainly. "That you'd never felt anything real for me. That she was the one you always came back to."

He didn't look away. Didn't offer excuses.

"I drove away in the rain with divorce papers and I died on that cliff road hating you." I held his gaze. "I need you to know I've said that out loud. Because I've been carrying it and I'd rather it exist between us in words than in silence."

"I know," he said quietly. "I know what I was."

"I'm not telling you to hurt you. I'm telling you because I can't fully let you in while I'm still holding that back."

He reached out and took my hand, turning it over in both of his. Not filling the space with words, just holding on.

"I'm sorry," he said. "Not as something that fixes it. Just because it's true and you deserve to hear it without qualification."

I looked at our hands. "I know."

We sat quietly for a moment.

"Is there more?" he asked.

"No. That was the thing." I exhaled slowly. "That was the last piece."

He brought my hand up and pressed his lips to my knuckles, unhurried, watching me over it. Something in my chest pulled tight and then released.

"Come here," I said.

He leaned in and I met him halfway, both hands in his jacket, kissing him with the particular intention of someone who has just put down something heavy and found their hands unexpectedly free. He responded in kind, one hand at the back of my neck, careful and then less careful when I made clear careful wasn't what I needed right now.

When we broke apart I stayed close, catching my breath.

"That was different," he said.

"Last piece," I said again. "I told you."

His thumb traced my jaw slowly. His eyes on my face with that expression I'd stopped trying to deflect. "Sophia."

"Don't say it yet."

"I wasn't going to." A slight smile. "I was going to ask if you wanted the rest of the takeout."

I laughed. Properly, surprised out of me. He looked quietly delighted by it in a way he tried not to show and failed.

"Yes," I said. "I want the rest of the takeout."

We finished eating and I washed up while he dried, domestic and uncomplicated, and I was aware of how thoroughly he'd settled into my space over the last weeks. Not taking it over. Just fitting into it, adapting to its shape the way water finds a container.

Afterward we sat on the floor against the sofa with the coffee he'd brought, my back against his chest, his arms loose around me. The city was quiet outside. The Harlow canvas watched from above the sofa.

"Tell me something about you," I said. "Something from before all of this."

"What kind of something?"

"Anything. Something real."

He thought for a moment. "I wanted to be an architect. When I was twelve. Before my grandfather made it clear that Sterling men ran Sterling Hotels and nothing else was acceptable." His voice was even. "I used to draw buildings. Fill entire notebooks. Eleanor threw them away once when I left them out. Said it was a waste of time."

I said nothing. Just stayed where I was.

"I haven't thought about that in years," he said.

"Do you still draw?"

"No. I stopped at fourteen."

I turned my head slightly. "You should start again."

"Sophia"

"I'm serious. Not as a career. Just because you wanted to and someone took it from you and there's no reason to let them keep it." I looked up at him. "You're building something new. You might as well know what you actually like while you're at it."

He was quiet for a long moment.

"You're extraordinary," he said. Not with the polish of someone delivering a compliment. Just a man stating a fact he'd arrived at and decided to say aloud.

I turned fully and kissed him again, slower this time, my hand against his face. He pulled me closer and I let him, settled into it with the ease of something becoming familiar.

When I pulled back his eyes stayed closed for a moment.

"Stay tonight," I said.

He opened his eyes.

"Not like that," I said. "Just stay. I don't want the apartment to be empty."

He understood the difference immediately. "Yes."

I got up and found him a spare blanket and he settled on the sofa without making it complicated and I went to my room and lay in the dark listening to the sounds of someone else breathing in my space.

It didn't feel like too much.

It felt like exactly enough.

I closed my eyes and slept without planning anything, for the second time since this all began.

Both times had been because of him. I was done pretending that didn't mean something.