Chapter 2
The dinner was at Lumina, the kind of restaurant where menus don’t list prices. I wore my black dress and my mother’s silver necklace. Michael, the architect, turned out to be Arthur Chen’s nephew — a thread connecting my old life to this one.
Over dinner I described what had made the Finch matter. Not the food. Not the decor. The regulars’ specific seats. The morning light at 8:30. The way the space understood that some people simply need somewhere to be.
Thomas listened without performing engagement. He simply listened.
The cafe opened in March. We called it the Second Cup. Within a month it felt like it had existed for years.
Thomas attended the opening, staying in the background. When he caught my gaze across the crowded room, the pride in his expression was complete and unguarded.
At closing time, after the last customer had gone, he was still there, straightening chairs.
“You should be proud,” he said. “This is exactly what I imagined when I first saw you at the Finch.”
“We built it together.”
He moved closer. The air between us shifted in a way I’d been carefully not noticing for months.
“Tessa. I’ve tried to keep this professional. But I cannot keep pretending that my interest in you is anything other than what it is.”
“I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you either,” I said. Quietly. Honestly. Without deciding to.
He crossed the space in three strides and framed my face in his hands.
“Tell me if this is wrong,” he said.
“It probably is,” I said. “I don’t care.”
The kiss was frightening and right simultaneously, both things true at once.
May you like
We broke apart in the dark of the cafe we’d built from something lost, both breathing hard.
“Since the Finch?” I asked.
