10. TEN
TEN
Alex
Dinner downstairs lasted eighty-seven minutes.
Emily sat across from me in the club restaurant eating pasta while I tried not to watch every movement of her mouth. The room held twelve other people, including two Sterling members who'd greeted me with enough surprise to make it clear my presence would be gossip before dessert.
I stayed. Emily had asked me to. That made the noise bearable.
"You're doing well," she said.
"I'm eating dinner."
"In public. With people."
"I've done it before."
"When?"
I cut into the steak I hadn't wanted. "Recently."
"The rooftop doesn't count. You stood against a wall and scared people away from the champagne."
"They were blocking the exit."
"They were celebrating."
"Both can be true."
Her smile came back, and something inside me unlocked.
I'd missed that smile more than I knew how to say.
For two days I'd been replaying the last expression she'd given me in the elevator — not anger, something worse.
Hurt. I could've handled shouting. Emily walking away quietly had taken apart every defense I'd built around the mistake.
Now she was here. Not upstairs. Not in my bed. Not yet. But here.
I kept my hands beneath the table because reaching for her every time she leaned closer was not going to help prove I'd learned restraint.
"You can touch me," she said.
I looked at her.
"You've been staring at my hand for ten minutes."
"Seven."
"Of course."
She placed her hand on the table between us.
I covered it with mine, and her fingers turned beneath my palm and threaded through, and the contact settled something restless that had been running through me since Tuesday morning.
Not enough — it would never be enough — but I was starting to understand that wanting more didn't entitle me to take it before she offered.
The waiter approached with the dessert menu, saw me, and visibly reconsidered. Emily caught him before he could escape.
"We'll see that, please."
He handed it to her instead of me. Emily waited until he'd retreated.
"You've terrified another staff member."
"He'll recover."
She opened the menu, her thumb still warm beneath mine. "Chocolate cake."
"You'll want the lemon tart."
Her eyes came up. I stopped. The answer had come automatically — the same reflex that made me order her coffee and arrange her car and shape her life around what I already knew she'd choose.
"You usually order lemon," I said, more carefully. "But you should pick."
"I was going to pick the lemon tart."
"I know."
"Then what's wrong?"
I looked at our hands. "I'm trying to learn the difference between knowing you and deciding for you."
Her face softened. "What's the difference?"
"Knowing means I can make your coffee before you wake up. Deciding means I don't get to tell you where you drink it."
Emily was quiet for a moment. "That's a pretty good start."
"I'm trying not to be a beast."
"I noticed."
The waiter came back. Emily ordered the lemon tart. I said nothing, and she looked pleased with me in a way that felt wildly disproportionate to the act of keeping my mouth shut — and still mattered more than the board's approval of any contract I'd ever written.
When the tart arrived, she pushed the first bite across the table toward me. I didn't like lemon tart.
I ate it, obviously.
Emily smiled into her own forkful.
After dinner she didn't take the elevator upstairs. She walked toward the lobby.
I followed her to the front doors. My car was waiting at the curb — I'd arranged it before remembering I was supposed to ask, nearly canceled it, then decided that an available car wasn't the same as an imposed one.
Emily spotted it. "Is that for me?"
"If you want it."
She studied my face. "Did saying that hurt?"
"Yes."
She laughed and stepped closer. "I'll take the car."
I opened the door for her. She didn't get in.
"Have you read my amendments?"
"Danny sent them an hour ago."
"And?"
"You gave the director authority to close the collection to members who violate handling procedures." I paused. "That section is about me."
Her mouth curved. "Do you object?"
"Yes."
"Will you fight it?"
"Only if it ends up with you in my bed."
She looked pleased again.
"The board meets tomorrow," I said. "Danny and Teller will approve the revised scope. Lola's found two other qualified candidates. Three interviews, open process."
"And me?"
"If you apply."
"I already did."
Everything inside me stopped. "When?"
"Before dinner."
I wanted to pull her against me, tell the driver to leave, carry her upstairs and keep her there until morning. Instead I stood beside the open car door and held myself still.
"Good."
Emily stared at me. "That's it?"
"No."
"What's the rest?"
I looked at her — standing in the glow from the club entrance with her coat unbuttoned and her eyes still a little red from earlier and the last traces of lemon tart on her lips — and the truth had become impossible to keep quiet.
"I want you to get the job. I want you on my floor every morning. I want your clothes in my drawers and your books next to mine. I want to know what you eat on Wednesdays and every day after that."
Her lips parted.
"But if they choose someone else," I said, "I still want you. The job and you are separate. You were right. I should've understood that before I hurt you."
Emily's eyes filled. I hadn't expected that.
She stepped into me and I wrapped my arms around her and held on. She pressed her face into my coat, and I could feel her breathing — uneven, warm through the fabric — and I kept still and let her decide what happened next.
"You make it really hard to stay angry," she said against my chest.
"You can stay angry."
"I am. Less than yesterday though."
"I'll take whatever reduction I can get."
She laughed and then she lifted her face.
"Do you love me?"
The question knocked the air out of me. Not because I didn't know.
I'd known before Boston. Possibly before the rooftop, when she stood in my archive and told me to return my own book. I'd known in pieces — coffee, open blinds, a shoe beneath her desk, the sound of the elevator bringing her back to me.
I'd just refused to name it, because love required more than wanting. It required letting the other person leave.
"Yes," I said.
Emily waited.
"I love you."
The words felt permanent the second they left me.
Her hand came to my face. "I love you too."
Every coherent thought I had disappeared except the need to hear it again.
"What?"
She smiled through the tears. "I'm not repeating it just because you weren't listening."
"I was listening."
"Then why did you ask?"
"I wanted it twice."
"That's obsessive."
"Only for you."
She kissed me. The lobby, the car, the people walking past the club — all of it vanished. I held her face and kissed her until the driver looked away and someone behind the reception desk dropped a pen.
When Emily pulled back, her cheeks were flushed.
"I'm still going home tonight."
The disappointment was instant. I didn't argue.
"Okay."
"I want one more night in my apartment where I can think clearly without you taking my clothes off."
"I could come over and leave your clothes on."
"That is a deeply unconvincing offer."
"It was still an offer."
She kissed the corner of my mouth. "I'll see you tomorrow."
"After the interview?"
"After. I'll call you."
I let her get into the car. It cost more than it should have. She rolled the window down before the driver pulled away.
"Alex?"
I leaned toward her.
"I love you."
Twice. I could've lived on it.
The interviews were the following afternoon.
I stayed on the thirty-second floor because Danny had made it clear that appearing anywhere near the conference room would be treated as interference.
At nine, Emily entered the first interview. At nine forty-seven, she left. At ten, the second candidate started.
I knew because I had access to the security system. I didn't open it. I thought about opening it twelve times.
At eleven thirty, Teller called. I answered before the first ring finished.
"You're unbearable when you're waiting," he said.
"Did she get it?"
"You're not part of this decision."
"Did she get it?"
"Danny wants to tell her first."
I hung up.
At eleven forty-two, the elevator opened. Emily stepped onto my floor carrying a slim folder, and I stood up so fast my chair hit the wall behind me.
She looked at it. "Elegant."
"What happened?"
"Good morning to you too."
"Emily."
Her face gave me nothing. I crossed the archive but stopped before I reached her — stopped before touching her, because she'd notice the restraint and it would matter.
She noticed. Then she smiled.
"They offered me the position."
Relief hit so hard I had to take a breath before I could speak.
"Do you want it?"
"Yeah."
Only then did I reach for her.
Emily dropped the folder on the nearest desk and came into my arms. I lifted her off the floor and she laughed, gripping my shoulders while I carried her into the library.
"You're technically celebrating an employee hire."
"I have zero authority over you."
"Correct."
"I can still kiss you."
"Also correct."
I set her on the desk and stood between her knees. She caught my tie before I could close the distance.
"Conditions."
"You covered these yesterday."
"New ones." She held the tie like a leash. "I'm keeping my apartment for six months."
"Three."
"Six."
"Emily—"
"Six. And if I tell you I need space, you ask me what that looks like instead of vanishing for two days."
"I was trying to respect—"
"I know. But there's a difference between giving someone space and going so silent they start checking whether you're alive.
Especially when the person is in love with you.
" Her grip loosened on my tie and her fingers smoothed the fabric instead.
"I don't need you to become someone different.
But I won't live in a beautiful room while the rest of your life stays locked on the other side of the door. "
I looked toward the library doors. They'd been open for weeks now.
"You're talking about downstairs."
"I'm talking about dinners. Friends. The world outside the thirty-second floor."
"How often?"
"Once a week."
"Twice a month."
"Three times."
"Accepted."
She laughed — bright and surprised and real — and I kissed her before she finished. Her hand slid from my tie to the back of my neck, and for a few seconds the conditions and the contract and the rest of it disappeared beneath the simple fact of her mouth against mine.
When I pulled back, she was smiling.
I looked at her — sitting on my desk, folder beside her, smiling like she'd won something and given me something at the same time — and for the first time in weeks, the library didn't feel like a place I needed to lock.
She'd chosen the job. She'd chosen me.
"All right," I said.
Emily kissed me once and slid off the desk. She held out her hand.
I took it.
On the way out, she stopped beside the glass cabinet. Nancy's book rested inside, the rose protected beneath its new archival page.
"Leave it unlocked," she said.
The key was in my pocket. It had been there for years — this small metal fact that I'd carried everywhere, the weight of it so familiar I'd stopped noticing.
Emily hadn't asked me to become someone else. She'd stabilized the rose without changing what it was. She'd entered my locked rooms without demanding I tear down the doors.
I opened the cabinet and set the key inside it. Then I followed her downstairs.