Chapter 89: A REQUEST FOR VALENTINE.

DANTE.

The afternoon moved at its own slow pace and we let it. There was a particular luxury in having nowhere to be, and we wore it comfortably, leaning back in our chairs, plates eventually cleared, the champagne half-finished, the garden below doing what gardens do when the wind passes through.

She had turned her chair slightly toward the view, one leg crossed over the other.

I couldn't stop looking.

"What?" she said, without turning.

"Nothing."

"You're doing it again."

"Guilty."

She turned then, a slow smile warming her face, and for a moment the thing behind her eyes was completely gone and she was just mine.

"I am so grateful for you," she said quietly. "I don't think I say that enough in the normal days. When it's school runs and dinner and laundry and meetings. I don't stop enough to say, I am genuinely grateful that you are mine."

"You show it," I said. "Every day. In a thousand ways you probably don't even notice."

She tilted her head. "Like what?"

"Like the way you still make my coffee exactly how I like it even when you're running late and it would be easier not to. Like how you always check if I've eaten before you eat. Like how you laugh at things I say when I know for a fact they weren't that funny." I paused. "You're kind to me, Cinnamon. In the small places. Those are the ones that count."

She was quiet for a moment, looking at me.

"I think I might cry at this table on Valentine's Day," she said.

"Please don't. Your makeup is too good."

She laughed instead, which was the goal.

I refilled both our glasses, water for me now, I was pacing myself and settled back into my chair. The right moment had been sitting with me all afternoon, waiting for its turn.

"Speaking of working in the small places," I started, and she immediately narrowed her eyes.

"Dante."

"Hear me out."

"You're going to ask me about DreamHaven again."

"I am," I said, unapologetically. "I've been patient."

She exhaled slowly through her nose and looked out at the garden. Then she turned back, folding her hands in her lap with composed energy.

"I'm happy," she said. It wasn't defensive. It was clear. "That's the first thing I want you to understand. What Risa and I have built in Meadowbrook—" she paused, searching for the right word, "I love it, Dante. We built that extension from nothing. Every client, every contract, every late evening and early call. That came from us. And it has grown into something I'm genuinely proud of."

"You should be proud—"

"It's also flexible, which matters more than people want to admit when you have a two-year-old. I work from home most days. I'm there for Oliver's mornings. I do his pickup when I want to. I'm present in his life in a way that I couldn't be if I was running a full corporate office again." She met my eyes. "That's not nothing. That's everything since you're always away."

I listened. I always listened to her, not waiting for a gap to reply, but actually paying attention.

"All of that is real," I said. "And I mean that. What you've done in Meadowbrook with Risa is something I respect enormously." I leaned forward, elbows on the table. "But baby, I now carry my father's entire business portfolio on top of DreamHaven. Everything Marcus and Max stripped away, I had to reclaimed. It's not just rebuilding. It's managing an empire that was deliberately destabilized, and doing it while trying to protect what we already had."

"You already have help."

I rubbed the back of my neck. "Tate is excellent. But he is one person. And I need someone I trust not just professionally but completely. Someone who understands how I think. I looked at her steadily. "That's you. It has always been you."

She dropped her fork, not in frustration

She rubbed her temple, contemplating what to say.

"If I come back to DreamHaven—" she began slowly.

I felt the shift before the sentence finished.

"It has to be clear." She looked at me directly. "I am your wife. I love being your wife. But inside those offices I need to be Cinnamon. Not the boss's wife who gets waved through, not the woman who is cc'd on things out of courtesy, not the person people agree with because they don't know where I end and you begin." Her voice was quiet but there was iron in the spine of it. "I work hard. I always have. And I want to be recognized for that work, on its own. No special treatment. No soft passes."

"Cinnamon—"

"I mean it, Dante."

"I know you do." I held her gaze. "And you know I wouldn't have it any other way. Your brain is one of the things that made me fall for you in the first place. The way you think, the way you see problems." I paused. "The one condition you're naming is also the only version I'd accept."

She looked at me for a long moment, reading me.

She exhaled, and some of the tension she'd been carrying quietly through lunch left her shoulders in one clean release.

"Fine." A small smile. "I'll come back."

"Yes." I punched the air, and she laughed at my expression.

"It won't be good for Oliver," she added, more softly now. The concession she was making coming into focus. "More time with the nannies. More evenings at your mother's."

"Mom would consider that a reward, not a sacrifice." I reached across and tucked a strand of hair back from her face. "And Oliver needs to see his parents building something. He's going to be running empires one day. Let him watch how it's done."

"That was smooth."

"I have my moments."

"Happy Valentine, honey," she whispered to me.

I blew her a kiss. "Let's always celebrate love, growth, respect, kindness and loyalty."

She nodded her head, smiling, I thought briefly that if this was what the rest of my life looked like, then whatever I'd done right to deserve it hadn't been enough.

I'd spend the rest of my years trying to be.

The Notebook had been her idea.

It was always her idea, and I always pretended to resist, and we both knew I didn't mean it. Somewhere in the last two years I had watched this film more times than I had watched most things I actually claimed to enjoy, and I had stopped being embarrassed about that fact.

She was curled into my side on the sectional, her legs folded beneath her. The remnants of dessert—chocolate-covered strawberries—sat untouched on the coffee table because she got caught up in conversation while I was absorbed in watching her talk. The floor lamp in the corner provided the only warm light, casting a soft glow around us as the television flickered gently.

On screen, Noah was pulling Allie through the rain.

I wasn't focused on the rain. Instead, I was captivated by how the light danced along her collarbone and how her fingers traced absent patterns on my knee as she leaned closer to me. The graceful curve of her jaw as she tilted her head and the calm rhythm of her breathing drew me in.

Two years together. A son. A life built from nothing and from choices made along the way. And this woman still held the same power over me that she did when I first laid eyes on her, making everything else around us fade into irrelevance.

Without even thinking, I turned down the volume.

She noticed immediately. "I was watching that."

"I know," I replied.

She lifted her gaze to meet mine, and that was all the invitation I needed.