Chapter 26

Cecilia

After breakfast, we both settled into the living room with our laptops.

Arthur had some emails to handle—transition stuff with the board, he said.

"You gonna be okay?" he asked, settling onto the couch with his laptop.

"Yeah, just some code stuff. Nothing urgent."

"Famous last words," he muttered, but he was smiling.

We worked in comfortable silence for a while, the kind that only comes when you're completely at ease with someone.

Arthur was focused on his screen, occasionally typing rapid-fire responses, while I pulled up my IDE and dove back into the problem.

The algorithm was supposed to reduce processing time by at least thirty percent, but I kept hitting the same bottleneck. The data structures were clean, the logic was sound, but something was off.

"Fuck," I muttered, staring at the error message.

"Problem?" Arthur asked without looking up.

"Just this stupid optimization issue."

"Want me to look?"

"You're busy."

"I'm answering emails. That's not busy, that's purgatory." He closed his laptop and moved to sit beside me. "Show me."

I pulled up the code, and Arthur leaned in, his chin resting on my shoulder as he scanned the screen.

"Okay, walk me through it."

I explained the problem—how I was trying to parallelize the data processing but kept running into race conditions that tanked performance instead of improving it.

"Have you tried—" He reached over and scrolled down. "There. You're locking the entire data structure when you only need to lock specific segments."

"But if I do that, I'll get—"

"Inconsistent reads, yeah. But you can handle that with versioning." He pointed at a section of code. "See? If you add a timestamp here and here, you can detect conflicts without blocking everything."

I stared at the screen, then at him. "That's... actually brilliant."

"I have my moments." He kissed my cheek and started to pull away, but I grabbed his hand.

"Wait, stay. Help me implement it?"

"You sure? I don't want to—"

"Arthur. Stay."

He settled back beside me, and we spent the next hour refactoring the code together, arguing about variable names and debating edge cases. It was nerdy as hell and completely perfect.

"Okay, run it," Arthur said finally.

I hit compile, holding my breath as the tests executed.

Green. All green.

"Holy shit," I breathed. "Perfect!"

"Of course it works." Arthur was grinning like he'd just won the lottery. "We're a good team."

I turned to kiss him, meaning for it to be quick, but he pulled me closer, deepening it until I forgot about code entirely.

Arthur settled back onto the couch with his laptop, occasionally glancing over at me with this soft expression that made my heart do stupid things.

Time slipped away. I was deep in the zone, when I felt arms slide around my waist from behind.

"Arthur, I'm almost—"

"It's almost six," he murmured against my neck.

I blinked, looking at the clock. "What? No way."

"Way." He pressed a kiss to my shoulder. "And I made dinner."

"You—when did you—" I turned to look at him, then past him to the kitchen, where I could see pots on the stove. "How long was I working?"

"About four hours." He didn't sound annoyed, just amused. "You get this look when you're coding. Like the rest of the world doesn't exist."

"Sorry, I—"

"Don't apologize." He pulled me up from the chair. "It's hot, actually. Watching you work. But you need to eat."

"What did you make?"

"Chicken marsala with roasted vegetables and garlic bread." He led me to the kitchen. "Nothing fancy."

"Arthur, that's literally fancy."

"It's comfort food." He pulled out a chair for me. "Sit. Let me take care of you."

Dinner was, predictably, amazing.

"You're gonna spoil me," I said, reaching for more bread.

"That's the plan." He refilled my wine glass. "Get you so used to good food that you can't live without me."

"Devious."

"I prefer 'strategic.'" But he was smiling, that soft smile that was just for me.

We ate in comfortable silence for a while, the kind that felt easy and right.

"Thank you," I said eventually.

"For what?"

"For this. For cooking, for helping with my code, for just... being here."

"Ceci." He reached across the table to take my hand. "There's nowhere else I'd rather be."

After dinner, we did the dishes together, bumping hips and stealing kisses between plates.

"I should probably check my phone," Arthur said reluctantly as we finished. "The board's been calling all day."

"Do you have to?"

"Eventually." But he didn't move to get it. "They can wait a little longer."

We ended up back on the couch, my legs across his lap, his hand resting on my ankle.

"This is nice," I said quietly.

"It is." He squeezed my ankle gently. "I don't think I've ever just... existed with someone like this."

"What do you mean?"

He pulled me closer. "This is the first time I've felt like I could breathe in years."

I understood exactly what he meant.

"We should do this more often," I said.

"What, sit on your couch?"

"No, dumbass. This. Just being together. No drama, no board meetings."

He laughed, and the sound was so genuine.

We went to bed early, both of us exhausted from the emotional roller coaster of the past few days.

Arthur changed into sweatpants and nothing else.

Which was deeply unfair and incredibly distracting.

And I pulled on an oversized t-shirt.

"Is that my shirt?" he asked, staring at me.

"Maybe."

"You're a thief."

"And you're shirtless in my bed. We all have our flaws."

He laughed and pulled me down onto the mattress, rolling us so I was tucked against his side.

"Goodnight, Ceci," he murmured, pressing a kiss to my forehead.

"Goodnight, Arthur."

I fell asleep listening to his heartbeat, thinking that maybe—just maybe—this was what home felt like.

I woke up sometime in the middle of the night to find Arthur having a nightmare.

He was tossing, muttering something I couldn't make out, his face twisted in distress.

"Arthur." I shook his shoulder gently. "Arthur, wake up."

His eyes snapped open, wild and unfocused, and for a second, he didn't seem to recognize me.

"It's okay," I said softly, cupping his face. "You're okay. You're safe."

He blinked, clarity returning, and then he was pulling me close, burying his face in my neck.

"Sorry," he muttered. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to wake you."

"Don't apologize." I ran my fingers through his hair. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"It was—" He took a shaky breath. "It was the night I turned him in. Except in the dream, you weren't there, and I couldn't do it, and he just kept—"

"Shh." I held him tighter. "It's over. He's gone. You did the right thing."

"I know. I just—" His arms tightened around me. "What if I'm like him? What if I—"

"You're nothing like him," I said firmly. "Nothing. You hear me?"

"How can you be so sure?"

"Because William Winston would never have nightmares about doing the right thing."

I pulled back to look at him. "Because you chose me over your family. Because you're here, in my shitty apartment, wearing sweatpants and having a breakdown, instead of in some mansion pretending everything's fine."

He laughed wetly. "Your apartment's not shitty."

"It's a little shitty."

"Okay, it's a little shitty." He kissed me softly. "But it's ours now."

"Yeah," I whispered. "It is."

We lay back down, tangled together, and this time when he fell asleep, it was peaceful.