Hazel's POV
"Happy anniversary," Julian whispered against my hair, exactly two years after that very first honest morning, sunlight spilling gold across our bedroom while Grace slept soundly in the nursery down the hall.
I turned in his arms, still soft with sleep, and found him watching me the way he always did now, unguarded, grateful, like a man who had finally stopped waiting for the debt collector to arrive.
"No note this year," I teased, remembering last year's handwritten confession that had replaced five years of identical gold watches. "Running out of things to say."
"Never," Julian said, smiling in a way that still occasionally startled me, so different from the careful, distant expression he used to wear like a mask. "This year, I thought we might let someone else do the tal
