“Tomorrow?”
That made him smile.
“Tomorrow works.”
He stood and extended his hand again.
I rose so fast my chair nearly scraped backward.
When our hands met, it felt less like a greeting and more like a bridge being built in real time.
“Welcome aboard, Sebastian.”
I shook his hand.
And for the first time since the morning before, I felt something stronger than fear.
I felt possibility.
When I got back to the car, I sat there with both hands on the wheel and the official offer papers on the passenger seat.
Then I called Emily.
She answered on the second ring.
“How did it go?”
I couldn’t help it.
I started crying.
Not the broken, humiliated kind from the day before.
The stunned kind.
The relieved kind.
The kind that comes when pressure leaves a body too fast.
“Sebastian?”
“I got it,” I said, laughing and crying at the same time. “Em, I got it.”
