Hazel's POV
The divorce papers were still sitting in my bag three weeks later, unsigned, folded at the same crease they'd held since the night I drafted them in anger, and I hadn't told Julian they were still there. It felt strange to carry both things at once, the papers and the balcony confession, the itemized bill for five years of service and the memory of his mouth finally saying I love you like he meant it. I wasn't afraid of my own answer anymore. I was afraid of what it would look like to everyone else if I gave it. Some mornings I would open my bag for a pen or a notebook and catch sight of the folded edge of those papers and feel a strange jolt, like finding a photograph of a person I no longer quite recognized as myself.
The board of Daniel Holdings had already started circlin
