12  Reconciliation, Properly

**JASMINE POV**

I started my new job on a Tuesday, which felt like an oddly unceremonious day for something I'd wanted for as long as I could remember.

My new desk was two floors down from Japheth's office, in the finance department proper, tucked between two windows with a view of absolutely nothing interesting an air conditioning unit and half a fire escape  but it was mine. My name was on a placard beside the door. Jasmine Ray, Financial Analyst. Not Ms. Jay. Not the temp. Not the assistant everyone assumed was there because of who she used to know.

Mine.

I spent the morning meeting people, memorizing names, getting handed files that actually required judgment instead of just organization, and by lunch I'd almost managed to forget the text from Richard sitting unanswered in my phone.

Almost.

Japheth found me in the break room around two, holding two coffees, looking uncharacteristically nervous for a man who ran board meetings before nine a.m. without blinking.

"I come bearing bribes," he said, holding one out.

"Bribes for what?"

"For interrupting your first real day. I promise I won't make a habit of it."

I took the coffee. He'd gotten it right cream, no sugar  the same way he always did now, like it was nothing, like he'd simply decided he was going to remember the small things about me from here on and hadn't made a production of it.

"How's it going?" he asked, leaning against the counter, careful to keep a respectable distance that felt, somehow, more intimate than if he'd stood close.

"Good. Overwhelming. Good." I wrapped both hands around the cup. "Nobody's looked at me like I don't belong here yet, so that's something."

"You do belong here." No hesitation in it this time.

"I know." And for the first time in longer than I could remember, I actually did.

We stood there for a moment in comfortable quiet, and I found myself studying him  not the CFO version, not the boy who used to call me goldfish, but whoever he'd become somewhere in between, someone who'd learned, apparently, how to just stand next to me without needing anything from the moment.

"Can I ask you something?" I said.

"Always."

"Why didn't you kiss me last night?" It came out more directly than I meant it to, but I'd never been good at working up to things slowly, not with him.

He blinked, clearly not expecting that particular question in a break room at two in the afternoon. "Because I wanted you to actually want it. Not just  need comfort after a hard day and have me be convenient."

"That's a very mature answer for a man who once threw a sketchpad-shaped tantrum because I hit you in the crotch."

He laughed, surprised out of him. "I contain multitudes, Peaches."

"Clearly." I set my coffee down on the counter. "For the record. I did want it. Last night. I just didn't know how to say so without it feeling like I was using it to skip past everything else we needed to actually talk through."

"And now?"

"Now I think we talked through enough of it." I looked at him steadily, making sure he understood I meant it not grief talking, not fear talking, not anything but a clear decision made in broad daylight, fully sober, entirely mine. "I'm not saying this because I'm sad, or scared, or trying to prove anything to my father, or anyone else. I'm saying it because I want to."

Something shifted in his face not surprise exactly, more like relief finally being allowed to land.

"Jasmine." Not Peaches. My actual name, careful, like he was asking permission with the word itself.

"Yes," I said, before he could even finish forming the question.

He crossed the small distance between us slowly, giving me every chance to change my mind, and when he finally kissed me it was nothing like I'd imagined in a hundred restless teenage nights spent staring at my bedroom ceiling wishing on stars I couldn't actually see. It was better, because it was real, and because I was choosing it wide awake, with both feet planted firmly on the ground, not swept into it by grief or wine or the dark.

He kissed me slowly, like he had all the time in the world and intended to use every second of it. One hand came up to rest against my jaw, and I felt the tremor in it small, barely there, the kind of thing you'd only notice if you'd spent your whole life learning someone's hands.

He was nervous. Japheth Montgomery, CFO, was nervous, kissing me in a break room at two in the afternoon.

I smiled against his mouth, and he pulled back just far enough to look at me, confused.

"What?"

"Nothing. You're just shaking a little."

"I've wanted to do that since I was seventeen years old and too much of an idiot to say so. Forgive me for being a little overwhelmed."

"I'll allow it." I kissed him again, shorter this time, and pulled back before either of us could get carried away in a room with a glass door and absolutely no lock. "I have a meeting in ten minutes."

"Of course you do." He didn't look remotely disappointed. If anything, he looked like a man who'd just been handed more than he thought he was allowed to ask for, and was perfectly content to wait for the rest.

"Same time tomorrow for coffee?" I asked, echoing his own words back at him from the night before.

"I'll be counting the hours."

I walked to my meeting with my coffee in one hand and my heart doing something entirely unprofessional in my chest, and for once, I didn't try to talk myself out of feeling it.

That evening, I texted Kate before I could second-guess myself.

**JASMINE:** We kissed. Properly this time. I meant it. I wasn't sad or scared or anything else. I just wanted to.

**KATE:** FINALLY. I have been waiting for this text for actual YEARS, Jasmine Ray.

**JASMINE:** Don't make it weird.

**KATE:** I'm going to make it extremely weird. I'm calling Mom.

**JASMINE:** Kate.

**KATE:** Kidding. Mostly. I'm just really, really happy for you both.

I set the phone down, smiling at the ceiling, and let myself believe, just for that one quiet evening, that maybe this time the good thing wasn't going to cost me anything at all.

I didn't yet know how wrong I was.