Page 66 of His Vow

Three blocks of silence. Traffic filled the gaps. A woman with a stroller passed us. A dog barked from a window above the street.

"The rosemary plant I left at your apartment," I said. "Is it still alive?"

He looked at me. Wasn't expecting that. "Yes."

"You water it?"

"Every morning."

I nodded. Kept walking. He kept pace. We both knew what I was asking — whether he maintained the small, human things I left behind, or whether the apartment went back to being a machine the moment I was gone.

"When did it stop being the plan?" I asked. "When did I stop being the access point?"

He didn't rush the answer. I watched him think — really think, not calculate. The distinction mattered. The man who calculated would have a polished answer ready. The man who thought took time because the truth was messy.

"The fitting room." His voice was low. "When you put your hands on my chest and told me I looked human. Something moved. I told myself it was nothing — the plan adjusting, adrenaline, proximity." He looked at the sidewalk. "It wasn't nothing. It was the beginning of the end of the weapon."

"That was months ago."

"I know."

"You had months to tell me the truth."

"I know."

I stopped. Turned to face him. "Why didn't you?"

"Because I was afraid that if I told you, I'd lose you. And by the time I understood I was going to lose you anyway, I'd already gone too far to know how to stop."

I read his face with my full attention. He wasn't performing vulnerability. He was standing in it, uncomfortable, exposed, holding still because I asked him to talk and talking was the hardest thing he did.

"That's not good enough," I said. "You know that."

"I know."

"But it's honest."

"It's the most honest thing I've ever said."

I started walking again. The distance between us was the same. But something in it had changed. Not warmth. Not forgiveness. A crack in the wall I'd built after the gala, just wide enough to see through.

I took him to a small Italian place I'd never been to. Neutral ground. No history. No memories to navigate around. The lighting hid nothing — no candles, no atmosphere, just two people in clear light with a short menu and a table small enough that our knees almost touched.

I ordered. He ordered.

The silence stretched, and I let it because I was done filling silences for men.

He asked about the gallery. Not to fill space — he asked what survived, what I was building, what happened to Rafael's second show. I told him the real version. The budget that didn't work, the lease under review, the collectors who disappeared. I didn't soften it. If this was going to be anything, it started with ugly truths.

He listened. Then he asked something he'd never done before. "How does it feel?"

I looked at him. The question landed in a place I didn't know was still tender. Everyone had asked what I was going to do. He was asking what it was doing to me.

"Like starting over." My voice was quieter than I intended. "Like everything I built was a painting someone else sketched, and I just colored in. And now I have a blank canvas, and I'm terrified because I don't know if I'm any good without the sketch underneath."

"You're good." He said it without hesitation. Without calculation. "I knew that before I knew anything else about you. The night I walked into your gallery, before the plan, before any of it — I stood in front of Rafael's painting, and I knew the person who chose that artist could see things other people missed. That wasn't Hugh. That was you."

My jaw tightened. My eyes went bright.