Chapter 7 #2
“He wasn’t cruel. Not in the obvious ways.
” Draven’s hand stilled against her stomach, his voice low, measured, like he was choosing each word carefully after holding them back for a long time.
“He just never stayed in one place long enough to matter. Always working, always somewhere else, even when he was standing right in front of you. My mother left when I was nine. I used to think it was because of something I did, until I got older and realized she’d probably just gotten tired of being married to a man who was never actually present, even in his own house. ”
“Draven.” She turned slightly to look up at him, her hand finding his where it rested against her belly.
“I’m not telling you this for sympathy.” He met her eyes, something raw and unguarded in his expression that she rarely saw outside of their most private moments.
“I’m telling you because I think you deserve to know why I am the way I am.
Why I don’t trust easily. Why I had to know everything about you before I let myself want you the way I wanted you.
” He exhaled slowly. “I watched my father build an empire and lose his entire family doing it. I told myself for years I’d never let anyone close enough to matter, because the one time it happened, watching my mother walk out that door, I learned exactly how much it costs to actually love someone and have it not be enough. ”
She pressed her palm flat against his chest, feeling the steady, unhurried beat of his heart beneath her hand. “And now?”
“Now I think I had it backward.” His mouth curved faintly, though his eyes stayed serious.
“It wasn’t love that broke our family. It was him never actually showing up for it.
I spent years building this company exactly the way he taught me, controlling everything, trusting no one, and I thought that was strength.
” He brought her hand to his lips, pressing a slow kiss against her knuckles.
“Then you walked onto that rooftop, and for the first time in my life I wanted to actually be present for something instead of just owning it from a distance.”
Sloane felt her throat tighten, the weight of what he’d just handed her settling somewhere deep and permanent in her chest. She understood now, more fully than she had before, exactly why he’d built his life the way he had, exactly why the orchestration and the control and the relentless presence in her life had never felt like manipulation once she saw the man underneath it.
He hadn’t been trying to own her the way his father had owned a company.
He’d been trying, in his own complicated way, to never let her feel the absence he’d grown up drowning in.
“You show up,” she said quietly. “Every single day. I don’t think you understand how much that means, coming from someone who’s watched men disappear right in front of her too.”
“I know exactly how much it means.” He pulled her closer, his lips brushing her temple. “Because I intend to keep doing it for the rest of both our lives.”
She fell asleep that night more certain of him than she’d ever let herself be of anyone, the quiet confession settling into her like another brick in a foundation she was slowly learning to trust completely.
* * *
Draven waited two days before calling Diane, choosing a Tuesday afternoon when he knew Sloane would be deep in a nonprofit board call that would keep her occupied for at least an hour.
He stood at the window of his office, phone pressed to his ear, watching the bay shimmer under the midday sun while Diane’s voice came through warm and immediately suspicious.
“You’re calling me without my daughter on the line,” she said. “That’s either very good news or very bad news.”
“Good news.” He allowed himself a small smile. “I want to propose to her, Diane. Properly. I’ve been waiting for the right moment since the day you asked me in your own living room, and I think I’ve finally found it.”
There was a brief, telling silence on the other end, followed by something that sounded suspiciously like Diane setting down whatever she’d been holding so she could give him her full attention. “Well, it’s about time. What do you need from me?”
“I need you there. I need you to help me get her to a specific place without telling her why, and I need your blessing, even though I suspect I already have it.” He glanced toward the closed door of his office, lowering his voice slightly out of old habit.
“I also need you to help me figure out what ring she’d actually choose for herself, instead of whatever I’d pick if left entirely to my own judgment. ”
“Now that,” Diane said, a laugh creeping into her voice, “is something I can absolutely help with. She’s never liked anything flashy, despite what you might assume from the company you keep. She wears her grandmother’s pearl earrings to church functions over diamonds every single time.”
“Something simple, then. Classic.” He made a note on the pad in front of him, already revising the plan he’d had in mind. “Tell me more.”
Diane talked for nearly twenty minutes, describing the kind of ring Sloane had once admired in a magazine years ago, a thin gold band, a single stone, nothing ostentatious, and Draven listened to every word like it mattered more than any quarterly report he’d ever reviewed.
He called Hugh next, catching him between meetings, and laid out the same plan in pieces, the rooftop where it had all started, a private booking he intended to arrange under another name so the staff wouldn’t tip anything off, the small details that needed coordinating without a single hint reaching Sloane.
Hugh listened, then let out a low whistle.
“Full circle. I like it.” A pause, then, quieter, more sincere. “She’s good for you, Drave. I haven’t seen you actually plan something just because you wanted it to be beautiful instead of efficient in longer than I can remember.”
“She makes most things feel worth doing properly.” Draven glanced again toward the door, some unfamiliar nervous energy moving through him that he didn’t bother trying to name. “I need you to help me with the timing. And I need Diane to get her there without explaining why.”
“Consider it handled.” Hugh’s voice carried genuine warmth now, no teasing left in it at all.
“Just tell me when, and I’ll make sure everything on my end is invisible until the exact second you need it to appear.
And Drave, for what it’s worth, Renee’s already agreed to help keep Sloane distracted that day if you need it.
She figured it out almost as fast as I did. ”
“Of course she did.” Draven allowed himself a small, rare laugh. “Tell her I appreciate it. Both of you.”
He hung up and stood for a long moment at the window, turning the whole plan over in his mind, weighing every detail against the version of this moment he wanted Sloane to remember for the rest of her life.
He thought about the rooftop, the string lights, the no-names game that had started this entire impossible, improbable thing between them, and felt something settle into place inside his chest, certain and unshakable, the same way it had felt the very first time he’d watched her laugh half a second too late at something her friends said.
* * *
Sloane noticed something shifting almost a week later, small things at first that she couldn’t quite name.
Draven had started taking calls in the other room more often, his voice low and clipped in a way that reminded her faintly of the early days when he’d been quietly orchestrating her entire move to Miami without telling her.
Diane had called twice that week just to “check in,” her voice a little too bright, a little too careful, the particular tone Sloane recognized from childhood whenever her mother was sitting on a secret she found impossible to fully disguise.
Even Hugh had gone strangely cagey at dinner on Thursday, exchanging a look with Draven across the table that neither of them bothered to explain, and Renee had spent an unusual amount of time that week texting Sloane about plans for “a girls’ afternoon” with suspiciously vague details.
She said nothing about any of it, choosing instead to watch the pieces accumulate with the same patient curiosity she brought to a stubborn dataset, certain that whatever was building beneath the surface of her ordinary days was about to surface all at once.
That Friday evening, Draven came home earlier than usual, freshly showered, dressed sharper than the occasion seemed to call for, and told her simply that he had somewhere he wanted to take her.
“Where?” she asked, already reaching for her shoes, the curiosity she’d been quietly nursing all week sharpening into something closer to anticipation.
“You’ll see.” He held out his hand, the same easy, certain smile on his face that she’d first seen across a rooftop table months ago, before either of them had ever said a single true name out loud. “Trust me.”
She took his hand, lacing her fingers through his, the old instinct to brace against good things finally, quietly, giving way to something far steadier instead.