Chapter 57

• Summer rolled in like a kiss on sun-warmed skin. The city felt slower, softer somehow. And for once, neither Ellis nor Asher had a flight to catch or a deadline pressing them apart. It was the in-between. The lull before something new. The kind of silence most people feared—but they reveled in it.
• Ellis stood in front of her finished canvas, barefoot again, this time wearing one of Asher's white button-ups, the sleeves rolled to her elbows. She tilted her head, studying the colors, the story she’d told. Love and longing. A skyline that shimmered just the way it had the night he proposed.
• "You gonna let me see it now?" Asher’s voice came from behind her, raspy with sleep.