Emma's POV
last week of February I finished my course. Not the certification exam, that's in March, but the coursework itself. The final portfolio submission goes in on a Wednesday morning and I close my laptop and sit at the kitchen island and feel the strange lightness of something that has occupied a corner of my brain for eight months suddenly not being there.
Dominic is in his office. I knock on the open door.
"Done," I say.
He looks up. Reads my face. Stands.
He crosses the room and hugs me properly, both arms, the kind that means something rather than the brief contact of daily movement, and I press my face into his shoulder and exhale.
"How does it feel?" he says into my hair.
"Odd. Like I've been carrying something and put it down and my arms don't know what to do."
He pul
