The invitation was handwritten.

Aria didn’t send a text.
Didn’t call.
Didn’t explain.

She just sent a folded card.

Inside, three details:

Date: Friday
Time: 7:30 PM
Place: The Studio — Conference Room A
(The one with the long table. The one they never used.)

And beneath that, five words scribbled in the corner:

“Come as you. Nothing else.”

Dominic arrived ten minutes early.

No suit. No armor.

Just dark jeans, a button-down, and the kind of quiet eyes you only earn after losing everything you thought you needed.

Aria was already there.

Candles on the table.
Two glasses of wine.
A stack of sketches between them—hers, old ones, with his notes in the margins.

She didn’t stand.

“Sit,” she said.

He did.

No one spoke for a while.

Not because there was nothing to say.

But because some things didn’t need to be said twice.

Finally, she broke the silence.

“Why’d you leave?”

“Because I couldn’t be the man who handed your power to someone like Devon. And I sure as hell wasn’t going to be the man who stood quietly while he tried to carve you out of the story.”

She nodded. “And if I’d asked you to stay and fight from the inside?”

“I would’ve lost myself doing it. And maybe dragged you down, too.”

Another long pause.

Aria reached for one of the sketches. Held it up.

A home design. One of the first they ever imagined together. Unfinished.

“Why’d you keep this?”

“Because I was always hoping we’d finish it.”

She stared at it. Then at him.

“I don’t want what we had before,” she said. “Not the power plays. Not the secrets. Not the mess.”

“I don’t either.”

“I don’t need saving.”

“I don’t want to save you,” Dominic said. “I just want to stand beside you and not be afraid of who we are when the world sees all of it.”

She looked down at the wine glass. Then picked it up and held it out.

“To what?”

He raised his glass. “To whatever comes next.”

Their glasses clinked.

And somewhere in the quiet between them, the past finally let go.