Yes, you do. He said quietly without pressure. She looked at him. Really?
Looked. The kind of look that a person uses when they've stopped deciding whether to look and just do. I told him being here helped me see something I couldn't see before. She said that wasn't a performance.
I meant it. I know. I meant you, she said plainly without decoration. The way Victoria Lane said everything when she finally decided to say it direct and complete and pass the possibility of mistaking.
The room was very still. Marcus stood up. He didn't cross the room. He didn't reach for her.
He stood up because he needed to be upright for this because what was happening required his full self, not his careful self or his protective self or the version of him that had been keeping everything behind glass for 6 weeks. I need to say something, he said. She waited. I have a daughter who is the center of my life.
I have a business that's still finding its feet. I have an ex-wife who just called to tell me she's getting remarried, and I felt almost nothing because I'd already moved on from that in ways I didn't fully understand until recently. He paused. I am not a complicated man, Victoria.
I know what I want. I know what I feel. I've just been waiting because I didn't think it was my place to say it. Say it, she said.
I think you are the most real person I've been around in years, he said. And I think you came here because you needed somewhere safe, and I want to be that, but I also I don't want to just be that. I don't want to be the place you recover. I want to be somewhere you stay.
The silence that followed was the loudest thing Marcus had ever heard. Victoria uncrossed her arms. She walked across the room. She stopped in front of him.
Close, not touching, but close enough that he could see everything her face was doing. All of it real. None of it managed or performed or filtered through the CEO composure that she wore everywhere else. I've been telling myself this was too fast, she said.
That I wasn't ready, that you deserved someone who wasn't still sorting through wreckage. We're both sorting through wreckage, he said. I know. She exhaled.
I know, but yours is. You're doing it without complaint. You're doing it while making eggs with the yellow part soft and fixing earring clasps and sitting up in the kitchen at 1:00 in the morning, just being someone who is genuinely honestly good. Her voice was steady, but something in it had gone soft at the edges.
Do you know how rare that is? Do you know that I have been in rooms with people who run countries? And I have never once felt as seen as I feel in your kitchen at 11 at night. Marcus said nothing.
He was afraid that if he spoke, he would say too much or not enough. And this was not a moment for too much or not enough. I'm scared, she said. I want you to know that.
I'm not This isn't me being certain. This is me deciding that scared and certain can coexist. He reached out and took her hand, slow, deliberate, giving her every opportunity to step back if she needed to. She didn't step back.
Her hand was warm this time. Tell me not to open that door, she said softly. Tell me to stay. He looked at her for a long moment.
And then he said the thing he believed all the way down to the bottom of himself. I won't choose for you, but if you stay, stay because it's what you truly want. Not because you're afraid to leave. Her eyes held his.
I want to stay, she said. Not afraid, not uncertain, just honest. He took one step closer. His phone rang.
They both startled. The spell cracked. Not shattered, just cracked a hairline fracture in the moment. And Marcus looked at the screen with the reflexive attention of a father whose child is at his mother's house 2 miles away.
It was his mother's number. He answered immediately, "Mama, is Lily? She's fine. She's fine." His mother's voice was quick, reassuring, and then shifted into something that was not quite an emergency, but was not quite not one either.
She fell on the front steps. Nothing broken. The doctor said it's just a sprain, but she's asking for you and she's You know how she gets baby. She needs her daddy.
Marcus was already moving. I'm on my way. He hung up and looked at Victoria. Lily got hurt.
I have to go, Victoria said immediately. She was already at the hook by the door, picking up his keys, handing them to him. Go right now. He took the keys.
He was halfway out the door and he stopped and turned back. She was standing there sweatshirt, no makeup, warm eyes, and she looked exactly like someone he wanted to come back to. I'll be back, he said. I know, she said.
He went. The drive to his mother's took 11 minutes. He spent eight of them reminding himself that Lily was okay. She was fine.
The doctor had confirmed it. and three of them thinking about a woman standing in his living room with warm hands and honest eyes saying, "I want to stay." Gay. Lily was on the couch with an ice pack on her ankle and her grandmother's arm around her. And when she saw Marcus come through the door, she said, "Daddy." In the voice she used only when she genuinely needed him. Not the performance of it, but the real thing.
Small and tired and relieved. He crossed the room and gathered her up carefully, ice pack and all. And she put her face against his neck and held on. "I fell," she said muffled against his shoulder.
"I know, baby. I got you. Does it look bad?" she asked. "It looks like a very brave sprain," he said.