5. Elise
— ? —
Elise
Six Weeks After the Vow Renewal
I’m starting to remember who I am.
It happens in pieces, like assembling a puzzle I didn’t know was scattered. I wake up one morning and actually want to get out of bed. I take a shower without crying. I make coffee and drink it while watching the sunrise through Maya’s kitchen window, and I think: This is what peace feels like.
I’d forgotten.
The architecture firm that hired me - a small, scrappy outfit that does sustainable design - is nothing like the career I imagined when I was twenty-two and full of dreams. But I’m working again. Drawing again. Creating something that exists outside the wreckage of my marriage.
And then there’s Dominic.
He texts me every day. Nothing pushy, nothing inappropriate, just... present.
Dominic: How’s the design coming?
I’m hunched over my desk, wrestling with a client who wants the impossible, when the message comes through. I smile before I can stop myself.
Elise: Terrible. They want “modern but classic but also edgy but not too edgy.”
Dominic: So they want a building that doesn’t exist.
Elise: They want a building that exists in a dimension where words have no meaning.
Dominic: Sounds like most of my clients. “I want to be acquitted but also I definitely did it.”
I laugh out loud. My assistant, a twenty-four-year-old named Priya who thinks I’m tragically old, looks up from her computer with raised eyebrows.
“Good news?” she asks.
“Just a friend.”
“Uh-huh.” Her tone suggests she doesn’t believe me for a second. “Is this the same ‘friend’ who sent you coffee this morning?”
I glance at the cup on my desk. Oat milk latte, extra shot, exactly how I like it. It arrived at 8 a.m. with a note that just said Fuel for the dimension-hopping building.
“He’s just being nice.”
“Men aren’t nice for no reason,” Priya says sagely. “They’re nice because they want something.”
“That’s cynical.”
“That’s realistic.” She turns back to her screen. “But for the record, whoever he is? He has good taste in coffee.”
***
The dinners become a habit.
Every few days, Dominic suggests somewhere new, a hole-in-the-wall Vietnamese place, a rooftop bar with a view of the city, a taco truck he swears has changed his life. We eat, we talk, we carefully avoid the electricity crackling between us.
It’s torture. The best kind of torture.
“Tell me about your mom,” I say one night. We’re at his apartment, the first time I’ve been there, sitting on opposite ends of his couch with takeout containers between us like a demilitarized zone.
Dominic pauses, chopsticks halfway to his mouth. “What do you want to know?”
“Anything. Everything.” I curl my legs beneath me, settling in. “You have her birthday tattooed on your ribs. She must have been important.”
He sets down the chopsticks. For a moment, I think he’s going to deflect - change the subject, make a joke, do any of the things men do when emotions get too real.
Instead, he says: “She was everything.”
The words are simple, but his voice cracks on them.
“She died when I was nineteen. Cancer. It was fast - six months from diagnosis to...” He swallows.
“She was the only person in my family who ever really saw me. My dad was always focused on the business, on appearances, on making sure the Reid name meant something. Connor was the golden child, the heir apparent. I was just... there.”
“But not to her.”
“Not to her.” He smiles, but it’s sad. “She used to tell me I was her favorite. I know you’re not supposed to have favorites, but she’d whisper it to me when no one was listening. You’re my favorite, Dominic. Don’t tell your brother.”
“That’s sweet.”
“It’s the only reason I survived that family.” He looks at me. “After she died, I had no buffer. No one to remind me that I mattered. I started pushing back against my dad, against the expectations, against everything they wanted me to be.”
“Is that why you became a defense attorney? Instead of joining the family business?”
“Partly. But also because of something that happened to her.” He hesitates. “She was accused of something once. Before I was born. It was bullshit - wrong place, wrong time, overzealous prosecutor. The charges were eventually dropped, but it changed her. She never trusted the system after that.”
“So you decided to work within it. Fight it from the inside.”
“Something like that.” He reaches for his wine. “I wanted to be the person she needed and didn’t have. Someone who would fight for her, believe her, not just assume the worst.”
We’re quiet for a moment. The city hums outside his windows, all light and noise and life.
“Thank you,” I say finally. “For telling me that.”
“Thank you for asking.” He meets my eyes. “Most people don’t.”
“Most people are idiots.”
He laughs, a real laugh, surprised and warm. “God, I like you.”
The words hang in the air. Simple and devastating.
“Dominic...”
“I know. Too soon. You’re still processing. I shouldn’t-”
“I like you too.”
He goes still.
“I’ve been trying not to,” I continue, the words tumbling out before I can stop them. “It’s complicated and messy and the timing is terrible and you’re Connor’s brother, which makes this whole thing feel like some kind of revenge fantasy-”
“Is it?”
“What?”
“Revenge.” His voice is careful. “Is that what this is? Getting back at Connor by-”
“No.” The word comes out fierce. Certain. “God, no. Dominic, when I’m with you, I don’t think about Connor at all. That’s the problem. I should be thinking about him - about everything that happened, about all the reasons this is a bad idea - but instead I just think about...”
“About what?”
“About how you make me laugh. About how you actually listen when I talk. About how you showed up with Vietnamese food when I was at my lowest and didn’t expect anything in return.
” I set down my wine glass with shaking hands.
“About how every time I see your name on my phone, my whole day gets better.”
Dominic is looking at me like I’ve just handed him something precious and fragile.
“Elise.”
“I know it’s fast. I know I’m probably not ready. I know-”
“Stop.”
“What?”
He moves closer. Not touching me, but close enough that I can feel the heat of him.
“Stop listing all the reasons we shouldn’t,” he says quietly. “I’ve been doing that for six weeks. It doesn’t help.”
“Then what does help?”
“This.”
He kisses me.
It’s not gentle. Not tentative. It’s six weeks of restraint finally snapping, his hands in my hair, my fingers gripping his shirt, our mouths meeting like we’re both starving for something we didn’t know we needed.
I end up in his lap somehow, straddling him on the couch, and he groans against my mouth in a way that makes my whole body catch fire.
“Tell me to stop,” he manages, pulling back barely an inch. His breathing is ragged. “Elise. Tell me to stop and I will.”
“Don’t you dare.”
I kiss him again, harder, and his hands slide under my shirt, tracing the curve of my spine, and I think: This is what it feels like to want someone who wants you back.
I’d forgotten this too.
“Bedroom,” I gasp against his mouth.
“Are you sure?”
“I’ve never been more sure of anything.”
He stands in one fluid motion, taking me with him, my legs wrapped around his waist. I laugh in surprise - Connor never picked me up, always said I was too heavy - and Dominic grins against my neck.
“Something funny?”
“Just happy.”
He pauses. Looks at me. And the expression on his face - wonder, disbelief, pure joy - makes my heart stutter.
“Yeah,” he says softly. “Me too.”
He carries me to the bedroom.