CHAPTER 55: Clear

POV: Selene Castellano

The doctor’s office smelled like recycled air and quiet anxiety.

Selene had been in enough medical spaces over the past year that she’d stopped noticing them. But today she noticed — the particular hum of the ventilation, the paper sheet on the examination table that crinkled every time she shifted, the framed print on the wall of a coastal scene that was meant to be calming and landed somewhere between pleasant and sad.

Avalon sat in the chair beside the table.

He’d insisted on coming, just quietly assuming he was included, the way he’d quietly assumed himself into most parts of her life over the past year. She’d stopped pointing out that she was capable of attending medical appointments alone because she’d realized the insisting wasn’t about capability. It was about him needing to be there.

That was its own kind of love. The showing up kind.

The door opened.

Dr. Reyes came in with the particular energy of someone who had good news and had learned not to lead with it immediately because patients needed a moment to prepare.

Selene had learned to read that energy too.

“Everything looks excellent,” Dr. Reyes said, settling onto her stool. “The tissue has healed completely. No abnormalities or no complications and from a clinical standpoint—” She paused. “You’re cleared. Full activity. No restrictions.”

Selene heard the words.

Processed them.

Felt something she hadn’t expected — The feeling of a chapter ending that had been open so long you’d forgotten what it was like to turn the page.

“Full activity,” she repeated.

“Everything. Exercise, travel, work.” Dr. Reyes smiled. “Life in its entirety.”

In the car afterward, Avalon didn’t start the engine immediately.

He sat with his hands on the wheel and looked through the windshield at the parking structure’s concrete wall and Selene watched him process it the way he processed things that mattered — going inward, going quiet, taking time she’d learned not to fill.

“Full activity,” he said finally.

“That’s what she said.”

“No restrictions.”

“Avalon.”

“I’ve been—” He stopped. Started differently. “Since the warehouse and our intimate section.” He didn’t finish the sentence. “I’ve been waiting for someone to officially tell me you were fine. Like I couldn’t fully believe it until someone with a medical degree confirmed it.”

She reached over and put her hand on the back of his.

“I’m fine,” she said. “Officially with medical confirmation.”

He turned his hand over and held hers.

“Good,” he said. Simply, like the word had been waiting somewhere and had finally been released.

He started the engine.

They stopped at the farmers market on the way home because Selene pointed at it and Avalon turned without discussion.

It was the kind of market that happened on weekday mornings when most people were working — smaller than the weekend version, quieter, the vendors with more time to talk and the customers with more time to listen.

They moved through it without agenda.

She stopped at a flower stall and didn’t buy anything, just stood for a moment among peonies and ranunculus and something purple she didn’t know the name of, breathing it in.

Avalon appeared beside her with a paper bag.

“What’s in there?” she asked.

“Blood oranges. The man was very convincing.”

“You bought blood oranges because a farmer was convincing?”

“He had strong feelings about them.” He looked at the flowers. “Get some.”

“I don’t need flowers.”

“Nobody needs flowers. That’s not the point of flowers.”

She looked at him.

He was examining a bunch of peonies with the focused consideration of someone making a genuinely important decision, which was such a specific and unexpected Avalon thing to do that she felt something move through her chest so quickly she almost missed it.

She bought the flowers.

Back at the penthouse, she put them in water while he cut blood oranges at the counter, and the afternoon light came through the kitchen windows at the angle it only reached in late afternoon and the whole room went briefly golden.

She stood in it.

Just stood.

“You’re doing the filing thing,” Avalon said, without looking up.

“I am,” she agreed. “This one’s important.”

He set down the knife. Came to where she was standing and stood right beside her in the light.

Neither of them spoke.

The kitchen smelled like orange peel and the flowers she didn’t need and the warm quality of afternoon in a place that had become, without her fully tracking the moment it happened, home.

“I want to tell you something,” she said.

“Okay.”

“I’ve been thinking about what comes next. Not for the company — us specifically.” She kept her gaze forward. “I want to try.”

“Try what?”

She turned to face him.

The golden light was fading at the edges now, the way it always did too quickly, and she looked at the man she’d lost and found and chosen and said it plainly the way she’d learned to say things that mattered.

“A baby,” she said. “When we’re ready. I want to try.”

The kitchen was very quiet.

Avalon looked at her for a long moment.

“Okay,” he said.

“That’s all?”

“What else would I say?”

“Something longer, more like— considered.”

“I’ve considered it.” He took her hand. “Okay means yes, whenever you’re ready. Okay means—” He paused. “I want that too, I just didn’t know how to bring it up.”

She leaned against him.

The kitchen settled into its evening self.

Her phone buzzed.

Maya. A photo this time rather than words.

Two coffee cups on a windowsill. Different sizes. Clearly from two different people.

And below the photo, one line.

He stayed this time.