“This is moving so fast. Too fast.”
I looked around the empty bedroom, imagining it filled with furniture, with our belongings, with the life we would build together.
“No,” I said. “Not too fast. Just right.”
He pulled me against his chest, and I felt him exhale with relief.
“I was terrified you’d think I was crazy. That buying a house after less than a week together was insane.”
“It probably is insane,” I admitted. “But I don’t care.”
We spent an hour wandering through the house, planning and dreaming. Preston pointed out where he wanted to put a piano. He said he would learn for me, and I suggested converting the basement into a wine cellar since apparently we were going to be entertaining mob bosses regularly.
As the sun set, painting the rooms in shades of gold and amber, Preston pulled me close in what would be our living room.
“I love you,” he said simply. “I should have said it more clearly before. Not falling in love. Not any hedging. Just I love you, Paige Hayes. Completely. Probably have for months.”
The words landed in my chest, warm and settling.
“I love you too. Even though this is crazy and probably ill-advised and definitely complicated.”
“The best things usually are.”
He kissed me, soft and sweet.
“Move in with me here once it’s ready. Or the penthouse until then. Stop keeping 1 foot in your old life and jump all the way into this 1.”
It was terrifying. It was too fast. It was everything I had never let myself want.
“Okay,” I whispered. “Okay. Yes. I’ll move in with you. We’ll build a life in this beautiful house. And I’ll try not to panic about how quickly everything is changing.”
His laugh was pure joy. “I’ll hold you to that.”
We made love that night in the empty house on a blanket Preston had grabbed from his car, christening the space that would become our home. Afterward, lying in his arms with city sounds drifting through open windows, I felt something I had not experienced since before my parents died.
Complete, unshakable certainty that I was exactly where I belonged.
“No more looking back,” Preston murmured against my hair. “Only forward.”
“Together,” I said.
“Together,” he agreed.
Somewhere in the city, Veronica Ashford boarded a plane to California, leaving behind the life she had tried to build. Leaving behind the man she had wanted but could never have, because she had never understood what he actually valued.
Not power. Not beauty. Not connections.
Just genuine human connection.
Love.
Trust.
All the things she had mocked me for.
Being plain, honest, and unglamorous had turned out to be exactly what Preston wanted, what he had been searching for without knowing it.
Look at you, she had said cruelly. He would never kiss you.
But she had been wrong.
So devastatingly, completely wrong.
Preston had kissed me, claimed me, loved me, and in doing so, he had shown me that I had never been invisible at all.
I had only been waiting for someone who knew how to really see me.