Page 95 of Obsession
The title card read: "Safe."
He stared at it. Then at me.
I shrugged. "I take pictures of things that matter."
He pulled me close, his forehead to mine. His glasses bumped my nose the way they always did because the geometry of his face and mine hadn’t figured out how to accommodate the frames yet, and we’d stopped trying to fix it because the bump had become ours.
I laughed. He didn’t let go.
My phone buzzed. A text from Miley. I opened it. A link to an entertainment article. I read the headline and grinned.
Hunter Interactive’s blockbuster Ethereal Vanguard adaptation was back on track. After the Tobias Hart scandal collapsed the original casting, Meridian had renegotiated with a new lead. The announcement went public just minutes ago.
Christopher Vale.
I showed Jace the screen. He read it. His expression didn’t change but his eyebrow went up a fraction.
"His handwriting is still atrocious," Jace said. "But his screen test was undeniable."
"Is that a compliment?"
"It’s an observation."
"For you, that’s practically a love letter," I teased.
He took the phone from my hand, set it on the nearest surface, and then pulled me back against him.
"The gallery is closed," he said. "The caterers are gone. We’re alone."
"I noticed."
"I’d like to take you home.Our home."
He said it back to me. "Our home." And the word settled into his accent like it had always belonged there, softer at the edges, the way his voice only got when he meant something too much to say it louder.
Outside, the Miami night was warm. Traffic humming, music drifting from somewhere down the block, the ocean underneath it all if I stood still long enough to hear it.
I took his hand. He took mine. We walked to the car. The gallery light spilled out behind us onto the sidewalk. My photographs were still on the walls. His ring was on my finger. And ahead of us, through the windshield, Miami stretched out in neon and the promise of a morning we’d wake up to together.
We were going to our safe space.
We were going home.
