Epilogue
Six months later, Alex still refused to sign books out correctly.
He'd improved in other areas. He came to dinner downstairs every Thursday, though he still sat with his back to the wall and treated unexpected conversation as a personal affront.
He'd joined Danny and Teller for three board meetings without leaving halfway through.
Last month he'd gone to JJ Clark's birthday dinner and stayed through dessert.
But the movement ledger remained his nemesis.
I found the missing volume on the table beside his chair, open under one hand while he read an email on his phone.
"Where's the form?"
Alex didn't look up. "What form?"
"The form you fill out before removing items from the archive. The form I've explained to you roughly forty times."
"This book was in my library."
"It was in the Sterling collection. You took it yesterday."
"I borrowed it."
"Without signing it out."
He lowered the phone. "You knew I had it."
"I suspected you had it because you suddenly couldn't make eye contact whenever I mentioned the eighteenth-century acquisitions."
"I never avoid you."
That part was true. Since I'd moved onto the thirty-second floor three weeks ago, Alex had gotten even less subtle about wanting me nearby.
He worked in the library while I ran the archive.
He showed up in my office whenever I closed the door for more than twenty minutes.
If I went downstairs for a meeting, he was somehow near the elevator when I got back.
I still had my apartment. Technically. I hadn't slept there in two months.
I held out the ledger. "Sign."
He took the pen — watching Alex Black comply with an archive procedure remained one of the quieter pleasures of my professional life — and signed his name. Added the date.
"Return time," I said.
"I haven't finished it."
"Estimated then."
He wrote whenever Emily is ready across the final column.
I stared at it. "That is not a time."
"It worked before."
I should've corrected him. Instead I leaned down and kissed him, and Alex caught my waist and pulled me into his lap before I could straighten. The book shifted dangerously close to the table's edge. I saved it first.
He looked genuinely offended.
"This is why your access is conditional."
The Sterling Club's collections now filled the renovated twenty-ninth and thirtieth floors — offices, conservation rooms, a reading space for approved researchers.
I'd hired two full-time archivists and a conservation assistant.
We'd cataloged nearly four thousand items and uncovered enough forgotten correspondence to keep the team busy for years.
It was the first job I'd ever had where I could plan past the end of a contract.
His mouth found the side of my neck. "You have a meeting in ten minutes."
"With Benson."
His hand pressed harder at my waist.
"Problem?"
"He requested a private meeting."
"To discuss donating his grandfather's collection. Jagger brought it up last week."
"Benson has never donated anything in his life." He scoffed.
"People change."
"Not Benson Cross."
There was more certainty in that than the situation warranted.
Alex had never warmed to Jagger's younger brother — Benson was loud where Alex was quiet, careless where Alex was deliberate.
Last Thursday he'd shown up late, charmed Lola into giving him someone else's table, and spent the evening making Matteo laugh so loudly that Alex had seriously considered leaving.
"He's harmless."
"He looks at you."
"Most people look at me when I'm talking to them."
"Well, I don't like it."
"You don't like anyone looking at me. You're practically a dragon."
No embarrassment. No apology. Alex's jealousy remained quiet, unreasonable, and entirely his own problem. I'd made that clear. He'd agreed. It hadn't stopped him from appearing at the start and end of every meeting I held with a male donor.
"You're staying up here," I said.
"No."
"Alex."
His face shifted toward reluctant acceptance. "I won't interrupt."
Close enough.
I stood and straightened my blouse. He stayed in the chair, watching me with the same focused attention he'd given me since the first week. Time hadn't dulled it. If anything, knowing me better had just given him more to notice.
He knew when I was tired before I did. He kept lemon pastries in the kitchen on Tuesdays because the coffee cart near my old apartment had stopped selling them. He could tell from my footsteps whether a board meeting had gone badly.
He still looked at me like every entrance was a return.
"I'll come back after," I said.
"You always do."
He walked me to the library doors. They hadn't been locked in months. Neither had the glass cabinet by the fire — Nancy's green book rested inside, the rose preserved beneath. Alex opened it sometimes now without shutting the library first.
He touched my hand at the doorway. "Dinner tonight?"
"Downstairs. It's Thursday."
"Up here."
"We agreed on once a week."
"We have plans."
"Since when?"
He caught my hand and pulled me back into the library. I expected an argument. Instead he backed me gently against the bookcase and kissed me.
Six months hadn't made Alex casual about this. He still kissed me like he'd been thinking about the exact right moment all day — one hand at my waist, the other sliding into my hair, holding me with focused tenderness instead of force.
I melted into him before I could help it.
He deepened the kiss, tilting my head back, and dinner became dramatically less important. His mouth moved from mine to the corner of my lips, then my cheek, then the spot on my neck that he knew made my knees go weako...
"This is bribery," I managed.
"Is it working?"
"No." I said, convincing no one.
"I have time, sweetheart."
No teasing in it. Even after six months, the plain intensity of him could knock every clever response right out of my head.
I touched his face. Alex turned and kissed the center of my palm, his eyes on mine. Then he stepped back.
"We have plans," he said again.
This time I heard the tension underneath. "What plans?"
His hand went to his pocket.
The velvet box appeared before I understood what I was looking at. He'd actually managed to surprise me. I stared at it. He didn't open it.
"You bought a ring?"
"Yeah."
"How long have you had it?"
"Thirty-eight days."
"Thirty-eight?"
"I was waiting."
"For what?"
"You."
So simply Alex — so plainly, stubbornly him — that my throat closed.
He'd spent the beginning of our relationship building the answer before asking the question. Now he was standing in front of me with a closed box and nothing arranged beyond it.
"What do you want?" I asked softly.
"You."
"For how long?"
"Forever."
My eyes burned.
He held the box between us but didn't open it until I nodded.
The ring was elegant instead of enormous — an old-cut diamond set low in warm gold. Beautiful without needing to announce itself from across a room.
I laughed through the tears building in my eyes. Alex's face stayed serious.
"Marry me, Emily."
No speech. No rehearsed promises. Just the question.
His hand was steady, but I knew him well enough to see the fear behind it. The part of him that was still learning how to ask for things he might not get.
I made him wait three seconds, possibly four.
Then I touched his face, and smiled.
"Yes, Alex. Forever yes."
Relief flooded his face and he smiled.
He slid the ring onto my finger, then caught me around the waist and kissed me hard enough to erase every disagreement we've ever had.
I wrapped my arms around his neck. "You could've proposed downstairs."
"No."
"In front of everyone."
"No way."
"At Thursday dinner."
"Absolutely not!"
I smiled against his mouth. "You still have to go to Thursday dinner."
"We're engaged. That should earn me at least one pass."
"It does not, my sweet beast."
He kissed me again. "How long is your meeting with Benson?"
"An hour."
"Forty minutes, then."
"An hour, Alex."
"I'll be here."
Benson Cross was not waiting for me.
I got to the reading room on the thirtieth floor and found it empty — no Benson, no paperwork, nothing to suggest anyone had planned to keep the appointment. I checked my phone. No cancellation.
I was about to call Lola when I heard his voice down the corridor.
Not the usual Benson — the easy charm, the volume calibrated to fill any room within earshot. This was quieter. Focused. Almost careful.
I came around the corner and stopped.
He was standing near the south windows with a woman I'd never seen before. Dark-haired, dressed simply — no jewelry, no labels, nothing that said money or membership. She was holding a drink she wasn't drinking, and she was watching the room.
Benson leaned against the window frame with his arms folded, angled so his body blocked her view of the corridor — placed there deliberately, I thought, though whether he was shielding her or containing her I couldn't tell.
He was smiling, but it wasn't the usually Benson smile, the one that charmed Lola and annoyed Alex and meant nothing at all.
This one meant something.
She said something I couldn't catch. Benson laughed — short, startled — and his head tilted the way people's heads tilt when someone's caught them off guard. When someone's turned out to be more interesting than expected.
She looked past his shoulder and saw me.
Her face changed instantly. The watchfulness vanished, replaced by a warm, open smile that arrived too fast and landed too clean.
I'd spent enough time around careful people to know a performance when I saw one.
Benson turned. "Emily. I'm late."
"You are."
"Got distracted." He didn't look at the woman when he said it. That told me more than looking would have.
"Shall we?"
He pushed off the window frame. "Lead the way."
He fell into step beside me, and I glanced back once. The woman was still by the windows, drink still untouched, watching him leave with an expression I couldn't quite place.
Whoever she was, she didn't belong here.
Benson knew it too. I could tell because he didn't introduce her, didn't explain, didn't mention her once during our entire meeting.
He talked about the donation — his grandfather's letters, some first editions Jagger wanted preserved — and he was engaged and thoughtful and surprisingly sharp about conservation priorities.
But his phone sat facedown on the table. And twice, his attention drifted toward the door.
After we finished, I went back upstairs.
Alex was beside the elevator when the doors opened, because of course he was. He looked at my hand first — the ring — then my face.
"How'd it go?"
"Good. Benson's donating his grandfather's letters."
"That's unlike him."
"People surprise you."
He considered this. "Rarely."
He took my hand — the one with the ring — and walked me back toward the library. Behind us the elevator doors closed.
Somewhere downstairs, Benson Cross was probably still not introducing the woman by the window to anyone.
I wondered how long that would last.