Page 85 of She's Not The One

She asks Damien about Willow. She tells Wyatt his shuffle is sloppy and offers to show him a trick she learned from a line cook named Hector. She laughs at Brad’s bad jokes and makes a worse one in return. She belongs at this table the way she belongs everywhere she goes. Not because the room changes for her, but because she walks in and any room gets instantly better.

The same way my life has gotten better simply for having her in it.

Finn has been quiet for the last several minutes. Not his usual quiet, the kind where he’s loading a joke. This is different. He’s watching Ella and me with an expression I can’t fully decode. Curiosity, maybe? Calculation, definitely. Something more than either of those that he probably doesn’t recognize yet.

He catches me watching him and his mouth quirks.

“Don’t look at me like that, Beckett. I’m not going to catch whatever you people have.”

“Nah, of course you won’t.”

Good luck with that one, Finn. When the right woman steps in front of you, all bets are off. I’m the living proof of that.

He picks up his whiskey. Takes a slow sip. Says nothing else.

The evening winds down. The poker pot gets divided. The check stays in the center of the table as a monument to what it bought me, which is everything.

Wyatt starts to cash out. Brad is telling a story about a yacht and a misunderstanding in Monaco. Gabriel is already standing, buttoning his jacket.

“So,” Damien says, leaning back. He’s the only one at this table who would ask this question sincerely, because he’s the only one besides me who’s been where I am. “How did you know? That Ella was the one.”

The room doesn’t go quiet. The guys are still talking over each other, chips clicking, laughter filling the dark corners. But the question lands in the space between Damien and me with enough weight that I feel it in my chest. Not the vise. Not the ache. Just the warm, full-body recognition of a truth I’ve been living inside for weeks now.

I think about the meditation app. The hushed voice telling me to find a place of comfort and calm. The blank screen behind my eyelids every single time until the morning I sat in a hospitalbed with her scarf in my fist and she filled the space. All of it. Every corner.

I don’t say any of that. These men would never let me hear the end of it, and besides, the explanation is simpler than the story.

“Because Ella taught me what home feels like.”

Damien nods. Once. He knows exactly what that sentence costs and what it’s worth.

Under the table, Ella’s hand finds mine. Her fingers lace through mine and she squeezes, not hard, just enough to sayI heard that, andI love you, andthis is real. I squeeze back.

I walked into this room one month ago alone, my hands shaking, my chest seizing, convinced that control was the only thing keeping me alive.

I was wrong about all of it. Every single thing. And sitting here with her hand in mine, a million-dollar check on the table, and the sound of my closest friends giving me shit I absolutely deserve, I can say with certainty that being wrong is the best thing that ever happened to me.

Ella leans over. Her lips brush my ear. “Take me home now, Alec.”

I look at her. At those soft blue eyes. At the scarf tied loosely around her throat and the smile that should still come with a warning label.

“Yeah,” I say, caressing her cheek. “Let’s go home.”