All Chapters of To Hate and To Hold: Chapter 31 - Chapter 37

Elena's phone buzzed itself off her nightstand at seven forty-three.She heard it hit the floor and lay there for a moment listening to it continue buzzing against the hardwood, persistent and unreasonable, before she rolled over and picked it up.The screen was a wall of notifications. News sites, social pages, accounts she'd never heard of, a text from Chloe that was entirely in capital letters and appeared to contain no actual words, just a sequence of exclamation marks and what looked like seven consecutive heart emojis.She sat up.The photograph had two million likes.She stared at that number for long enough that it stopped looking like a number and started looking like a shape she didn't recognize. Two million. People she would never meet, in places she would never go, had stopped their scrolling and pressed a small heart beneath a photograph of her and Julian on a marble staircase.She clicked into the comments without meaning to.*This is what true love looks like.**The way

"You're late," Julian said when she walked in.Elena glanced at the clock on the wall. "By four minutes.""Three sessions in and you're developing habits." He was already in the center of the cleared space, shirtsleeves rolled up, waiting with the particular patience of a man who had decided something was worth waiting for and was mildly irritated that he'd had to."Three sessions in and you're counting minutes." She dropped her cardigan over the back of a chair and came to the center of the room. "Maybe I needed the four minutes.""For what?""To prepare myself."His eyes moved to hers. "For dancing.""For you," she said simply, and held out her hand.Something shifted in his face — quick, there and gone. He took her hand.The record was already playing, a piano doing most of the work tonight, slow and unhurried. They settled into the hold — his hand at her waist, hers at his shoulder, the careful distance they'd established over two sessions that was already slightly less careful th

They worked through the night.Not together in the same room exactly — Julian at his desk with his phone and his contacts and his knowledge of suppliers who answered calls at eleven in the evening, Elena at the small writing table in the hallway with Dante on one end of the line and Marco sending updates from the vineyard on the other. But close enough. The study door stayed open. She could hear his voice when he made calls — low and precise, the particular tone he used when he needed something done immediately and was making clear that immediately was not a suggestion.By midnight the equipment was arranged. By one in the morning Dante had confirmed the treatment team for first light. By two Elena had spoken to Marco three times and her father once — her father, who had heard something in her voice and asked carefully if everything was alright, and to whom she had said yes, everything is handled, go to sleep — and had finally stopped pacing the hallway.She stood in the doorway of Ju

Dinner wound down the way good dinners do — nobody announced it was ending, it just did, the candles burning lower, the conversation finding its own quiet. Julian's hand had stayed on Elena's under the table for the rest of the meal. She'd stopped thinking about what it meant somewhere between the second course and dessert, which probably meant something in itself. Evelyn had talked about the rose garden. Which varieties survived the coastal winters, which ones she'd replaced after her husband died, and why. "He had terrible taste in roses," she said, spooning dessert with the deliberate care of someone who had decided to enjoy it properly. "Beautiful in every other way. But roses, no." "What did you plant instead?" Elena asked. "David Austins." A small lift at the corner of her mouth. "He would have hated them. Far too romantic for his taste." Julian made a quiet sound beside Elena. His hand shifted on hers under the table. After dessert the nurse appeared in the doorway. Evel