Chapter 2: The Compass

I did not go to him.

That was the first thing I told myself, standing at those windows with London glittering below and Damien Adeyemi's eyes still finding me across the room like a compass that had never stopped pointing north.

You do not go to him.

I went to Tobi instead.

It was the right move. Practically, emotionally, spiritually, in every language I could think in. I crossed the rooftop with the measured calm of a woman who had not just felt the architecture of her entire future wobble on its foundation, slipped my hand into Tobi's and leaned into the solid warmth of him the way you lean into a wall you trust to hold.

His arm came around my waist immediately. Automatic. Like I was something he had already decided to protect before I even arrived.

"Hey." He dipped his head toward my ear. "You disappeared."

"I was talking to Priya."

"Mm." He pressed a brief kiss to my temple and went back to the conversation, his arm staying around me, anchoring me to this rooftop, to this moment, to the version of my life that made complete and logical sense.

I smiled at something his friend said.

I did not look toward the entrance again.

I lasted four minutes.

The party wound down after midnight.

Tobi's friends hugged me warmly. Congratulations, welcome to the family, you're exactly what he needed. I received each one with the gracious warmth of a woman who knew how to be present in a room even when part of her was somewhere else entirely.

Priya found me near the end, coat already on, expression carefully arranged.

"Ready?" she said.

"Yes. Walk me out?"

We took the stairs instead of the lift. A wordless decision, the kind that only exists between people who have known each other long enough to communicate without deciding to. Our heels echoed in the stairwell and neither of us spoke until we hit the ground floor and pushed through into the cool night air of Mayfair.

London received us with its usual indifference. Black cabs. A group of people spilling out of a restaurant. The distant percussion of a city that never fully slept.

"He left twenty minutes after you went back to Tobi," Priya said. She was not looking at me. Eyes forward.

I said nothing.

"I watched him," she continued, same even voice. "One more drink. Spoke to Marcus for about ten minutes. Then he left. He didn't look back across the room." A pause. "Except once."

I kept walking.

"Priya."

"I'm not saying anything." Her voice was clean, careful. "Just giving you information."

We reached the corner where our routes split. Priya's Uber was already waiting.

She turned and looked at me properly for the first time since we came downstairs.

Her expression said everything her words had not.

"Call me tomorrow," she said.

"I will."

She squeezed my arm once, brief and warm, the gesture of someone who had decided tonight was not the night for the full conversation. Then she got in the car and was gone.

I stood on the pavement.

Watched the car pull away.

Looked up at the Mayfair sky, that particular orange-grey of London at night, light pollution turning the dark into something that was never quite dark.

My phone buzzed.

Tobi: Coming down now. You okay?

I typed back straight away.

Yes. Just needed air. See you outside.

I put my phone in my bag and touched the ring on my left hand briefly. The cool metal. The weight of it. The diamond I had not yet fully looked at directly.

By the time Tobi came through the door, coat on, easy smile, reaching for my hand without having to think about it, I had assembled myself completely.

I was fine.

Absolutely fine.

We walked to the waiting car and I did not think about a compass that had spent eight months pointing north and had apparently not changed its mind.

I did not think about it at all.

In the car Tobi held my hand on the seat between us and talked quietly about the evening. Marcus's speech. The caterer. A couple they had met who were also recently engaged and wanted to double date.

I listened. Responded at the right moments. Laughed once, genuinely, at something he said about the canapés.

I was present. I was warm. I was exactly who I needed to be.

At a red light he turned and looked at me in the dark of the car, that quiet architectural attention of his, reading me the way he read spaces.

"Happy?" he said.

I looked at him.

This man. His steady eyes. His certain hands. The way he asked that question not with anxiety but with genuine curiosity, like my happiness was something he wanted to understand rather than something he needed for his own reassurance.

"Yes," I said.

And I meant it.

Both things were true at the same time. I meant it, and something in my chest was still vibrating at a frequency I could not name.

The light changed.

The car moved forward.

I faced the window and watched London rearrange itself around us in the dark.

I saw the notification at 1am.

Tobi was asleep beside me, deeply and genuinely, breathing with the slow regularity of a man whose conscience offered him no turbulence. I had been lying on my back for forty minutes staring at a ceiling that had nothing useful to tell me, when I reached for my phone with the vague intention of checking nothing in particular.

The notification sat at the top of the screen.

One message. No preview. Just the name.

Damien Adeyemi.

I stared at it.

The bedroom was very quiet. Outside, a car passed. Tobi's breathing continued its steady unbothered rhythm beside me.

I put the phone face-down on the nightstand.

Lay back.

Stared at the ceiling.

I did not sleep for a very long time.