Chapter 63

• It was a quiet evening, the kind that settled gently into your skin without asking permission. There were no calls scheduled, no press requests hanging in the air, and no boardroom strategies waiting behind half-closed doors. The boutique was closed, the inbox ignored, and the house was still, save for the occasional hush of distant traffic weaving through the city below. For once, I wasn’t expected to deliver a plan, hold a meeting, or explain away a disaster. And for once, I didn’t feel the need to fill the silence with anything. It was the kind of silence that didn’t ask to be broken.
• The hallway light cast a soft glow across the polished wood floors as I passed through the living room and pushed open the door to the rooftop terrace. The air was cooler up there, clean and dry, the kind of air that carried nothing but the scent of late summer—brick, distant rain, and a trace of honeysuckle from the garden two terraces over.
• I found Julian standing near the edge, his back to me, hands resting lightly on the railing as if he were holding the skyline in place. The wind tousled his hair just slightly, softening the sharp edges of his posture. He didn’t turn when he heard me step out. He didn’t need to. We had reached that point in the strange intimacy that had been building between us where silence was no longer uncomfortable. It simply was. It had become its own language.