Page 34 of The Broken Keys

Something flickers across her face. “I had to. After everything fell apart, I had to find meaning in life again.”

Her admission cuts through me.After everything fell apart.After I let Leon manipulate me into destroying us. After I was too fucked up and scared to fight for what mattered most.

“Lily…”

“Don’t.” She tries to slip past me. “We agreed to move forward, remember?”

I catch her hand as she passes, stopping her. “I know we did. But I need you to know that seeing this, seeing what you’ve built... I’m not just proud of you, I’m in awe of you.”

She gazes down at our joined hands, and when she speaks, her voice is gentle. “It was hard, and sometimes I was so scared building this all on my own. When my parents… Sometimes it was difficult to press on.”

“You don’t have to be scared anymore.”

She meets my eyes, and there’s a question there. The same one that’s been hanging between us since Coachella.

Can we really do this? Can we find our way back to each other after so much damage?

“Come on.” She tugs me toward the door. “Let me show you my private office.”

Her personal space is smaller than I expected, but it’s unmistakably hers. A canvas covers an entire wall, filled with images ranging from nature photography to vintage fashion drawings.

Her desk is an organized mess, with samples and design tools arranged in a way that probably makes perfect sense to her and no one else.

But what stops me cold is the window. The view looks out over the city, and for a moment I can imagine her here late at night, working by lamplight while the world sleeps below.

I face her. “You work too much.”

“Probably.” She settles into her chair, looking gentle in this area that’s so clearly hers. “But I love it.”

“I can tell.” I glance around the room. “Do you ever think about what comes next?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you’ve created all this. You’re launching new collections. What’s the next mountain you wanna climb?”

She’s quiet for a long moment. “I want to make quality fashion accessible to women who feel invisible. Not just expensive clothes for people who can already afford anything they want.”

“That’s honorable, Lily.”

“It’s ambitious. Maybe too ambitious.”

“No such thing.” I stride to her desk, needing her to understand. “I always knew you had it in you to build something like this. Even when we were teenagers, you saw thingsdifferently. You were always a go-getter and got what you wanted.”

She stands and comes around the desk to stand in front of me. “What about you? What comes next for Callum Mayze?”

The question catches me off guard. For so long, my future has felt like something that happens to me rather than something I choose. But standing here with everything she’s created, taking in the woman she’s become, I know exactly what I want.

“I wanna continue writing songs that matter. Not just songs that sell.” I reach out, taking her hand in mine. “And I wanna do it with someone who reminds me why art matters in the first place.”

“Callum…”

“I’m not asking for promises. I’m just telling you what I want.”

She closes the distance between us. “What if what you want changes?”

“It won’t.”

“How can you be so sure?”