We got home just after midnight.Ethan made tea while I took off my heels at the door and sat on the kitchen floor for a moment, back against the cabinet, just sitting, letting the night decompress around me. The gala. Beatrice's fractured face. Vanessa leaving early in her red dress. Damien at the bar not moving for the better part of an hour. All of it settling now into something quieter, the way things settle when you have been holding yourself together in a room for hours and finally have permission to let the room go.Ethan set a mug on the floor beside me and sat next to me against the cabinet without comment. The kitchen warm around us. The city outside doing what it always did."How do you feel?" he said eventually.I thought about it honestly. "Like something just ended," I said. "And something else is about to begin."He nodded. He understood without needing more than that.I slept well. Better than I had in months.Three days later the merger completion was filed publicly.
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