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Alle Kapitel von EYES OPEN: Kapitel 61 – Kapitel 70

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Chapter 61: The Apartment

The Clerkenwell apartment becomes ours on a Friday.Keys handed over at nine am, a brief handshake with the letting agent who has the cheerful efficiency of a man who sells people their futures every day and has not lost enthusiasm for it, and then Rhys and I are standing in the empty space with the keys in our hands and the London morning coming through the east and west windows simultaneously and doing that thing with the light that made us both stop the first time we saw it.Still doing it.Still right."Well," I say."Well," he says.I walk to the kitchen counter and run my hand along it, the long one that faces the room, and I think about Sunday mornings and music from someone's phone and I feel something so settled and complete it almost frightens me.Almost.I am past being frightened of good things."Helena filed the heritage application yesterday." "Her lawyer called mine." A pause. "She also called me directly."I turn. "What did she say?""She said, and I am quoting direct

Chapter 62: The Ring

He finds it on a Sunday.I know because he leaves early, tells me he has a site call, and comes back two hours later with no mud on his boots and a particular expression on his face that he is trying very hard to make neutral and failing completely.I say nothing.I am on the couch with coffee and my laptop and I watch him come in and hang up his jacket and pour himself water and do the small domestic motions of a man trying to act like nothing is different and something is very different."Good call?" I ask."Fine," he says. "Productive.""Mm," I say, looking back at my screen.He sits beside me.I can feel him looking at me."What?" I say without looking up."Nothing," he replies.I close the laptop.I turn to look at him fully and his expression is doing several things simultaneously, warm and certain and something underneath that is almost nervous which on Rhys is so rare and so endearing that my chest does something completely involuntary.Rhys Callahan, who looked at rings for t

Chapter 63: Telling People

We call Nora first.Rhys's idea, which tells me everything about who he is, choosing his sister before anyone strategic or impressive, just the person who will feel it most and deserves to hear it first.She picks up on the second ring and before either of us speaks she says, "Something happened. I can hear it.""We are engaged," Rhys says.The sound Nora makes is not crying exactly. It is the sound of someone who has been hoping for something specific for a long time and has just found out it happened and their body does not know what to do with the relief."Oh thank God. Oh thank actual God. Joel owes me forty pounds.""You bet on us?" Rhys asks."Obviously," she says. "Joel said six months minimum before you sorted yourself out. I said eight weeks." A pause. "It has been eight weeks exactly, I am counting Sunday.""You counted," I say."Camille, I have been counting since the first Saturday when you sat in his apartment and told me you were figuring it out and your voice did the th

Chapter 64: My Mother Comes To London

She arrives on a Friday evening with two suitcases for a three day visit.I do not comment on the suitcases.Rhys picks her up from the station because I am finishing something at Harlow and cannot leave and when they arrive at the apartment together, I open the door to find my mother already mid conversation with him, gesturing about something, and Rhys is listening with his full attention and nodding and they both look up when the door opens with the specific ease of two people who have already figured each other out in a twenty minute car ride."You were right about the architecture," my mother says to me as she comes in. "He is very interesting.""I did not say that," I say."You implied it," she says, walking past me into the apartment. She stops in the main room and looks around and does the full assessment, quietly, the way she does everything important. She looks at the books on the shelves, the kitchen counter, the east and west windows and what the light does when it comes t

Chapter 65: Just Us

The week after my mother leaves is the quietest week we have had since London.No Helena confrontations. No consortium complications. No Derek updates or Vivienne echoes or Tasha adjacencies. Just the apartment and the work and the evenings and each other, which turns out to be more than enough, which turns out to be everything.Monday through Wednesday I am deep inside the Meridian board presentation, Priya and Saoirse and I working with the focused momentum of a team that has found its rhythm, and I come home each evening to Rhys already there, something on the stove, the apartment warm and lit and smelling like a home that is actually lived in.Thursday he comes to Harlow for lunch.Not because we planned it. He texts at noon saying he is nearby and I meet him in the lobby and we go to the place two streets over where the corner table is always available for us now because the owner has noticed we prefer it and saves it without being asked which is the specific small magic of becom

Chapter 66: Saoirse

She knocks on my office door on a Wednesday afternoon with an expression I have not seen on her before.Not the sharp focused energy she brings to research. Not the quiet satisfaction of someone whose work is finally being used properly. Something more personal and slightly uncertain, which on Saoirse, who is one of the most self-contained people I have met, means something significant is happening."Sit down," I say.She sits. Puts her laptop on her knee. Does not open it."I need to tell you something," she says. "And I need to tell you before you hear it from someone else."I lean back in my chair. "Go ahead.""Declan contacted me last week. His new company. He wants me to come with him. Senior research role, significant salary increase, full creative autonomy on the accounts he took with him when he left."The office is quiet.I look at her steadily. "What did you tell him?""I told him I needed time to consider," she says. "I did not want to tell you until I had thought about it

Chapter 67: What Rhys Found

He is in the living room when I get home.On the floor.Surrounded by papers and photographs and what looks like architectural drawings spread across the coffee table and the floor around it, cross legged in the middle of it all with his reading glasses on, which I have seen exactly twice before and find unreasonably attractive, and he looks up when I walk in with an expression that is alive and excited in the specific way of someone who found something they were not looking for."Sit down," he says. "Look at this."I drop my bag and sit on the floor beside him and look at the papers.Old photographs. Black and white, slightly damaged at the edges. The building, but not as it is now, as it was, seventy or eighty years ago judging by the quality and the clothing of the people visible in the background of two of the shots."Where did you get these?" "The local historical society," he says. "I have been in contact with them since the heritage application. They sent these today." He pick

Chapter 68: The Dog

His name is Arlo.Medium build, amber eyes, the colour of dark honey all over with one white ear that looks like someone started painting him and got distracted. The rescue centre described him as energetic and affectionate with a good temperament around people which is exactly the brief and also, we will discover, a significant understatement on the energetic part.He destroys a throw pillow within four minutes of arriving in the apartment.Not aggressively. Joyfully. The specific joy of a dog who has found something soft and has decided it is his now.Rhys picks up the stuffing from the floor with the expression of a man recalculating several assumptions."Good temperament..." "He has a great temperament," Rhys says. "Toward the pillow."Arlo looks at us both with his amber eyes and his one white ear and wags his entire back half because his tail is not sufficient to contain whatever he is feeling about this situation.I sit on the floor.He climbs into my lap immediately. All of h

Chapter 69: Complicated

At two, Rhys sends a photo.Arlo, at the building site, sitting beside Rhys's site manager Marcus with the one white ear forward and the amber eyes doing their thing, wearing what appears to be a small yellow hard hat that Marcus has balanced on his head and which Arlo is tolerating with enormous dignity.Below the photo: He came to work with me. Marcus is obsessed. The entire site crew has named him foreman.I show Priya.She makes a sound.I show Saoirse.She actually laughs out loud, surprised out of her by a dog in a hard hat, and it is the most unguarded I have seen her and I think, there she is, the real one underneath the careful professional, and I am glad she is here.I text back: He has a better title than me.Rhys: He has a better title than everyone. Marcus wants to keep him.Me: Marcus cannot have him.Rhys: Marcus knows. He is devastated.I put my phone down smiling and go back to the presentation and outside, London does its afternoon thing and somewhere across the city

Chapter 70: Callum Reid

I tell Rhys at dinner.Not immediately. First I come home to Arlo losing his mind at the door, both paws on my shoulders, one white ear forward, tail making structural threats to the hallway furniture. First I change out of my work clothes and sit on the kitchen counter while Rhys finishes cooking and we do the easy debrief of two people whose days intersected with a dog in a hard hat.Then over dinner I say, "Callum Reid called me today."Rhys looks up from his plate."The Reid Creative CEO," I say."I know who he is," Rhys replies. "Helena knows his name like most people know curse words." He sets his fork down. "What did he want?""Dinner tomorrow," I say. "He said he has a proposition I will find very difficult to say no to.""And?" Rhys pushes."And I told him I would think about it and call him back," I reply. "Which I did, from outside our building, and I said yes."Rhys looks at me steadily."You are going," he says."I am going to have a dinner meeting with him," I say. "Beca

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