Chapter 14 - The Blueprint of Tomorrow
By our one-year anniversary of dating, Julian and I had moved past coffee dates and architectural debates into something deeply permanent. We purchased a piece of waterfront land just outside the city—a rugged, beautiful cliffside plot overlooking the river where we intended to design and build our own home from scratch.
We spent late summer evenings sitting on camp chairs over the dirt lot, sketching out rough floor plans on graph paper with mechanical pencils.
"No hidden rooms," Julian joked one evening, tracing a line for a massive glass wall that would catch the sunset.
May you like
"Not a single one," I laughed, leaning my head against his shoulder. "Every wall is glass, every beam is exposed, and every door unlocks from the inside."
He kissed the top of my head, his arm wrapping securely around my waist. The ghosts of the Langford Hotel—the amber lights, the whispered lies, the cold betrayal in Room 518—felt like a lifetime ago, a discarded draft of a poorly written tragedy that had long since been shredded and hauled away.
