Vivienne's POV
I stopped holding back.
That was the only way to describe what shifted after that Friday evening with Maya, Lyla and Ella sitting in my apartment with a laptop between us and a financial quarter that lined up too neatly to mean nothing.
I made a decision.
And I stopped managing around it.
I invited Charles into my life. Not slowly. Not with the careful step by step approach I had been using since the napkin. I just opened the door and let him in.
....
I took him to a Lumière supplier dinner on a Wednesday.
He sat beside me and talked to people the way he talked to everyone. Like they were worth listening to. He asked questions that had nothing to do with impressing anyone and everything to do with actually wanting to know. He didn't perform. He just showed up.
The h
