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That evening, after everyone had gone, the flat fell quiet.

I stood on the balcony and let the breeze in.

Below, all the city lights.

I was really here. In this flat.

Not as anyone's fiancée. Not as an attachment to someone else's life.

Just as myself.

Elliot finished the kitchen and came to stand beside me.

"Cold?"

"No."

He took a thin jacket from the chair and laid it over my shoulders. Naturally. Without ceremony.

I turned to look at him.

"Elliot."

"Yes."

"You said — when I'm ready to move forward, you'd be here."

"Yes."

"What if I said I wanted to try. Now."

He looked at me. A real stillness passed through him — the kind you only catch for a second.

For one moment, the steadiest person in any room looked actually startled.

I found that unexpectedly interesting.

"What — you can't even respond to yes?"

He recovered, slowly. His voice came lower.

"Stella Fairfax. Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Not out of gratitude?"

"No."

"Not because I happened to be nearby?"

"No."

I held his gaze. I meant it.

"Because you showed me that I deserve to be treated well."

A few seconds of quiet. Something that had been held for a long time settled.

Then he reached out and held me — briefly, not heavily, not long.

But the kind of hold that reaches all the way in.

He said, very quietly:

"I've been waiting to hear that for a long time."

I pressed my face into his shoulder, and found I wanted to laugh and to cry at once.

Not the cry of pain.

The cry of someone who has been walking a very long road in the dark, and finally sees a light.