The negotiations took three hours, and somewhere inside them, I forgot to be nervous entirely.
Damian ran his side of the table the way I remembered him running everything as a boy, direct, unhurried, entirely without the need to prove himself that I'd grown so accustomed to in Marcus, who had never once, in two years of marriage, let a room forget whose name was actually on the door. Damian listened when Freya spoke, genuinely listened, the kind that shows itself in the follow up question rather than a polite, distracted nod. He listened when I spoke too, which unsettled me more than it probably should have, given how unremarkable simple listening ought to have felt after everything.
"Your terms on the distribution timeline are aggressive," I said, at one point, studying the document in
