Chapter 8
* * *
Draven drove with one hand resting on her knee the entire way, refusing to tell her anything beyond the promise that she’d understand once they arrived, and when the car finally pulled up outside the Mercer Enterprises building, Sloane felt her stomach do a slow, curious flip.
“We’re going to the office? Tonight?” She glanced at him, brow furrowed, smoothing a hand over the soft fabric of her dress where it stretched across her belly.
“Not the office.” He came around to open her door himself, helping her out with the careful, practiced ease he’d perfected over the last seven months, his hand settling at the small of her back. “The roof.”
Something in her chest tightened pleasantly at that, the memory rising up unbidden, string lights and a black dress and a man who’d spent twenty minutes pretending he wasn’t watching her.
She’d noticed, walking through the lobby, that the building felt unusually quiet for a weeknight, the security desk manned by someone she didn’t recognize who simply nodded them both through without a word, like he’d been briefed in advance not to ask questions.
“You’ve cleared out the whole building,” she said, half a question, half a realization, as the private elevator carried them upward.
“Just the rooftop access, technically.” His mouth curved, though his eyes stayed serious, fixed on the floor numbers climbing. “I didn’t want any chance of someone wandering up here tonight who didn’t belong.”
“You’re nervous.” She studied him, surprised by it, surprised at how rarely she’d seen this particular flicker behind his composure.
“I am.” He admitted it plainly, no attempt to hide it the way the old version of him might have. “I’ve planned acquisitions worth nine figures with less concern than I’ve put into tonight.”
The elevator doors opened onto the rooftop, and Sloane stopped breathing for a full second.
The space had been transformed entirely from the bar she remembered, the same string lights strung overhead but multiplied tenfold, soft white bulbs crisscrossing the entire open-air terrace like a low net of stars.
A single table sat near the railing where they’d first talked, set simply, two candles flickering against the evening breeze.
No staff in sight, no other guests, just the two of them and the whole skyline spread out beyond the glass barrier, the city lights beginning to flicker on below as dusk settled in.
“Draven.” Her voice came out softer than she intended, her eyes tracing the familiar shape of the space, the exact railing she’d been standing near the night he sat down uninvited at her table. “This is the same spot.”
“The exact same spot.” He guided her toward the table, pulling out her chair, his eyes never leaving her face.
“I bought out the entire rooftop tonight. No other reservations. I wanted it to be just us, the way it should have been from the start, before I went and turned it into something complicated.”
She settled into the chair, watching him take the seat across from her, his expression carrying a vulnerability she rarely saw outside their most private moments, the same rawness from the night he’d told her about his mother.
A server appeared briefly, someone Draven must have specifically chosen, setting down two glasses, sparkling water for her, something amber for him, before vanishing back toward the elevator without a word, leaving them entirely alone again.
“Do you remember the rules we made that first night?” he asked, once the silence had settled comfortably around them again.
“No names.” She smiled, the memory warm even now. “Strangers in the morning. Whoever slipped first lost.”
“I broke that rule within the hour, sitting right here, asking for your name before I’d even finished my drink.
” He turned his glass slowly between his fingers, considering.
“I told myself it was just curiosity. It wasn’t.
I already knew, the second you laughed at something your friend said a half-beat too late, that I wasn’t letting you disappear without a name attached to you. ”
“You didn’t let me disappear at all, as it turned out.” She arched an eyebrow, amusement threading through the words despite the warmth gathering behind them. “You hunted me down with a private investigator and rearranged my entire career.”
“I did.” He didn’t flinch from it, his eyes steady on hers.
“I orchestrated your entire move to this city. I had you investigated before I ever sent you that contract. I built an entire career path around getting you into my building so I could see you every day without having to explain why I needed to.” He reached across the table and took her hand, his thumb tracing slow over her knuckles.
“I used to think I needed to apologize for that. I don’t anymore. ”
“You don’t?” She tilted her head, curious despite the heat creeping into her cheeks at the memory of how furious she’d been the day she found out.
“No.” His eyes held hers, steady, certain.
“I’m grateful for it instead. If I hadn’t gone looking for you, if I hadn’t built that contract specifically to bring you into my life, I might have spent years wondering what happened to the woman from the rooftop who slipped out before I ever learned her name.
I’m not sorry I went looking. I’m only sorry it took me so long to tell you the truth about it once I found you.
” He brought her hand to his mouth, brief, deliberate.
“Everything since then, every morning I showed up at your door, every appointment, every meal, that was never about control, Sloane. That was just me, finally, learning how to actually show up for something instead of just owning it from a distance.”
She felt her throat tighten, the words settling somewhere deep and unshakable in her chest. “I know that now. I think I’ve known it for a while.”
He stood then, coming around the table to crouch in front of her chair, taking both her hands in his.
The candlelight caught the determined set of his jaw, the same expression she’d seen on him in boardrooms, in hospital hallways, in every moment that had ever mattered enough to demand his full attention.
“I’ve trusted my instincts in every part of my life that’s ever counted.
They told me you were mine the second you laughed at something your friends said a half-second too late, before I even knew your name.
They’ve never once been wrong about you.
” He reached into his jacket pocket, producing a small velvet box, his hand steady despite the unmistakable nerves flickering behind his eyes.
“Marry me, Sloane. Properly. Not because of a contract, not because of a baby, not because either of us got swept up in something we couldn’t control.
Marry me because I love you, and because I intend to spend every day for the rest of my life proving that to you, the way I should have started doing from the very first morning I woke up and found you gone. ”
She opened her mouth, but no words came at first, just a wet, overwhelmed laugh that startled out of her chest as he opened the box to reveal a thin gold band with a single, modest diamond, exactly the kind of ring she’d once admired in a magazine years ago and never told a soul about except her own mother.
“How did you know,” she managed, blinking back tears.
“Your mother.” He smiled, soft, certain. “She told me you wear her pearls to church over diamonds every time. I wanted something you’d actually choose for yourself, not something I’d pick if left to my own judgment.”
“Yes.” She said it before he’d even finished sliding the ring from its box, both hands coming up to frame his face, pulling him into a kiss that tasted like salt and disbelief and something far steadier than either of those things. “Yes, Draven. Of course it’s yes.”
He laughed against her mouth, low and relieved, slipping the ring onto her finger with hands that weren’t quite as steady as he probably wanted them to be, and then he kissed her again, deeper this time, one hand cradling the back of her head, careful of her braids, the other resting protective over the curve of her stomach where their daughter shifted lazily beneath his palm like she already understood something important had just happened above her.
They didn’t move from the rooftop for a long while after that, wrapped together near the railing under the string of lights, the city humming quietly below them, both of them simply existing in the warmth of having finally arrived somewhere they’d been circling for months.
At one point she pulled back just far enough to look at the ring properly, turning her hand in the soft light, and he watched her do it with the unguarded satisfaction of a man who’d finally gotten something exactly right.
“We should call my mother,” she said eventually, laughing. “She’s going to want every single detail, and she already knows something happened. She’s been transparent as glass all week.”
“She’s known since I called her two weeks ago.” Draven admitted it with a faint, sheepish smile. “I asked for her blessing, and her help picking the ring.”
“Of course you did.” Sloane shook her head, smiling, leaning her forehead briefly against his shoulder. “You’ve been planning this for weeks behind my back.”
“I told you once I’d go after what I wanted.” He pressed a kiss to her temple. “I meant it then. I mean it more now.”
* * *
The wedding came together faster than either of them expected, though neither wanted the kind of spectacle that came naturally to a man with Draven’s resources.
Sloane had been clear from the start, no enormous guest list, no performance for cameras or investors or anyone who hadn’t actually earned a seat in the room, and Draven had agreed without a single argument, understanding exactly why that mattered to her more than he needed it explained.