POV: Jasmine
Several days passed. The structure held.
Aurora had stopped asking who was coming. When Finn walked in on Tuesday evening she looked up from her drawing and said, "You're late," with the calm authority of a child who expected his presence honoured.
"Traffic," Finn said, hanging his jacket on the chair. "What are you drawing?"
"A horse. It has seven legs now because six wasn't enough."
"Reasonable," Finn said. He caught my eye across the kitchen and smiled — the real one, the one that did something to the base of my spine every time it appeared.
Asher came several times a week. He would loosen his tie and Aurora would climb into his lap, and the sight of his hands — careful, deliberate, holding my daughter — made something low in my stomach tighten in a way I could no longer pretend was gratitude.
I went to Cadence for a full day. The artist signed by the end of the week. Something clicked into place — competence, quiet and grounding. Doing this well was not a betrayal of grief but a continuation of everything Liam had believed I was.
That evening Finn was in the kitchen when I got home. Pasta — garlic and butter, the warmth that meant he had been at it for a while. Aurora at the table. Horses. Still too many legs.
"How was Cadence?" he asked without turning from the stove.
"She signed," I said. "The vocalist. Done."
"That's the one you restructured the arrangement for?" He glanced over his shoulder, and the pride in his face was open, unguarded, aimed at me in a way that made my breath catch.
"That's the one."
I came up behind him to see what was in the pan. He turned — and the distance between us collapsed to nothing. His face inches from mine. The heat from the stove behind him mixing with the heat coming off his skin. His hand, wet from the sink, landing on my hip.
He did not move it. I did not step back.
His fingers pressed into my hip bone through the fabric. Not hard. Just enough that I could feel each one — the dampness from the water soaking through my shirt and reaching my skin. My body responded before my mind could intervene. A warmth that started where his hand was and spread upward through my ribs, dropping lower.
I was aware of his mouth. Three inches from mine, maybe less. Close enough that I could see the texture of his lower lip, the way his breathing had gone shallow. Close enough that if either of us leaned forward the entire architecture of what we had been maintaining would collapse, and I was not sure I wanted to stop it.
Aurora's crayon scraped across paper behind us. The pan sizzled.
His eyes held mine. Dark, direct. I saw the want in them — not hidden, not apologised for. The want of a man who would not take what was not offered but who needed me to see exactly how much the not-taking cost him.
Then he turned back to the stove. His thumb traced a slow half-circle on my hip bone before he let go. The drag was deliberate — he pressed into the curve, followed it, let the contact linger past any point where it could be called accidental.
I stood behind him and felt the absence of his hand like a physical thing.
I went to the table. Sat beside Aurora. "Tell me about the seven legs," I said. My voice was steady. My pulse was not.
"They help her run faster," Aurora explained. "Regular horses fall down. Mine doesn't."
"She has a point," Finn said from the stove, and the roughness in his voice told me he was still standing inside the same moment I was.
Later — Asher arrived.
He brought documents. We sat at the dining table while Finn took Aurora to the living room.
"The licensing dispute," Asher said, opening his folder. "Their counsel is pushing for a flat buyout. I think we counter with a revenue share tied to streaming performance."
"Show me the numbers," I said.
He leaned forward to lay out the projections and I caught his scent — clean, particular, the cologne I had been noticing for months and had recently stopped pretending I didn't.
We worked through each line. His voice was low and precise, and I was close enough to feel it vibrate through the table surface into my forearms.
"This clause is wrong," I said, pointing to the third page. "The exclusivity window overlaps with the distribution agreement we signed last month."
"You're right." He leaned in to read where I was pointing. His face close to mine — not like Finn, not sudden. Gradual. The slow, deliberate closing of distance that was so specifically Asher it made my skin prickle. "That needs to come out entirely."
I reached across him for a pen. My shoulder pressed against his chest.
He shifted. Not away. Into it.
The pressure was firm. Intentional. His chest against my shoulder, the warmth soaking through my sleeve, and I felt my body curve toward the contact — a fraction of movement, involuntary. He kept writing.
His handwriting did not change. Mine did — the letters loosening, trembling, my hand unable to maintain precision while every nerve on my left side was occupied with the sensation of Asher's body against mine.
"The revenue share works better long term," I said. My voice came out lower than I intended. "Counter at twelve percent."
"Agreed," he said. His arm still against mine. His voice had dropped too — in response to my proximity the way a body responds to warmth by leaning closer. "I'll draft the response tonight."
Neither of us moved apart.
We finished the work. Asher closed his folder. Finn was on the couch with Aurora asleep against his arm. I stood at the counter with a glass of water I had not drunk.
"You seem different lately," Asher said, watching me from the dining table.
"I said something out loud to the therapist. Something I've been thinking for a long time."
"What did it feel like?"
"Like setting something down," I said. "Something I'd been carrying so long I forgot it had weight."
He stood. Came to me. Every step a decision.
He kissed me on the forehead.
Slowly. His lips warm against my skin, staying long enough that I felt his breath across my hairline. Finn's touch was fire, immediate and consuming. Asher's was gravity — the force that held everything together without asking to be seen.
He pulled back. His eyes moved to my mouth for one unguarded second — brief, involuntary, the single crack in his composure — then back to my eyes.
"I am choosing to go second," he said. "Not because I am behind. Because I know what I want, and I am not rushing it."
He went back to the desk.
"Is that it?" I asked.
He did not look up. "For now. You said yourself you are not rushing. Neither am I."
From behind the closed door of the piano room — silence.
Then one note. Then another.
Tentative, searching, the sound of something finding its way out of the dark. I had played them this morning, and now they were coming back through the closed door as though the piano remembered.
Asher paused. Finn opened his eyes, Aurora still asleep against his arm. Both of them listened.
The notes continued. Unfinished. Reaching.
I set down the glass. Walked to the piano room. Opened the door.
Sat down and played.