Chapter 7
“Nathan,” she whispered. The name came out as a fragile, broken exhalation into the cold.
The man stepped forward.
His movements were measured, unhurried, carrying the absolute, quiet authority of someone who had never had to raise his voice to command a room. As he cleared the shadow of the colonnade, the blue brazier light washed over his features.
He was strikingly, devastatingly handsome, but not with the soft, groomed perfection of the men inside the rotunda. His features were hard, aristocratic, yet tempered by a severe, watchful intelligence. There were faint lines of discipline around his eyes, and a set to his mouth that spoke of immense, solitary burdens borne without complaint.
He looked down at her where she knelt on the flagstones.
He didn’t look disgusted. He didn’t look confused.
He looked at her as if she were the only living thing in the entire glass tower.
“You’re freezing, Daphne,” he said softly.
Before she could scramble to her feet, Nathan sank down on one knee before her.
The movement was so sudden, so devoid of hesitation or aristocratic pride, that Daphne flinched. The hem of his bespoke tuxedo trousers brushed against the cold stone, ruinous to fabric that cost thousands, but he didn’t spare it a glance.
Instead, his gaze dropped to the ground between them.
He reached out. His fingers, long, warm, and sure, picked up her fallen hospital badge.
He didn’t look at the laminated title. He didn’t sneer at the institution. He simply turned it over in his palm, then reached down and gathered her subway card and lip balm, setting them carefully back inside her satin clutch.
Then, he extended his right hand toward her.
“Give them to me,” he murmured.
Daphne pulled her hands back toward her chest, curling her fingers into tight balls. “Nathan, don't... you shouldn't look at them. They’re... they’re red. They’re ruined from the disinfectant. I couldn't even get the iodine off my cuticle before I left the shift.”
“Daphne.”
His voice was a command, but wrapped in a velvet tenderness that shattered the last remnant of her composure.
“I didn't wait three hundred and sixty-four nights to look at silk,” Nathan said, his eyes locking onto hers with unwavering, fierce focus. “Give me your hands.”
Trembling, her chin wobbling as fresh tears pricked behind her eyelids, Daphne slowly unclenched her fingers.
She extended her right hand into the space between them.
Nathan didn’t hesitate. He took it.
His skin was warm—scorching, almost, against her ice-cold flesh. His palm was large, calloused at the heel in a way that surprised her for a man in an evening suit, and his grip was infinitely gentle. He didn't just hold her fingers; he cradled them, his thumb tracing the pale, silvery crescent scar running across the meat of her thumb.
The breath hitched in her throat. A shiver ran through her, not from the cold, but from the unbearable, terrifying intimacy of his touch.
“Sixty hours,” Nathan murmured, his thumb brushing the faint amber shadow of iodine beside her nail. “You spent sixty hours this week keeping strangers from slipping into the dark. And you think you have to apologize to me for the marks it left?”
“You don't understand,” Daphne choked out, her voice cracking as the dam broke. “Nathan, please... you don't know what I’ve done. You think I’m someone else.”
Nathan didn’t release her hand. Instead, he wrapped his other palm around hers, completely enveloping her small, scarred fingers in his heat. He rose to his feet, gently, effortlessly pulling her up with him until she stood on the flagstones before him.
She felt so small against him. His broad frame blocked the biting wind coming off the balustrade, wrapping her in his scent—sandalwood, clean cedar, and the crisp, cold air of the upper atmosphere.
“Tell me,” he said, looking down into her eyes. “What haven't you told me, Daphne?”
Daphne looked up at him, her vision swimming through a haze of tears.
Under the ambient glow of the glass pavilion, she could see the stark, heartbreaking reality of the contrast between them. He was magnificent. Even if he claimed to be an overnight logistics engineer, he carried himself like royalty. His suit was flawless, his posture commanding, his aura so pure and powerful that even in the shadows, he seemed entirely untouchable.
And she was standing before him in a ninety-dollar rented dress, her hair unraveling from the cheap pins, her face scrubbed bare of the glamorous illusion she had traded in for a whole year.
“The picture,” she sobbed, the words tearing out of her chest like shards of glass. “The girl on the profile. The girl with the golden hair in the sun... it wasn't me, Nathan. It was never me.”
Nathan remained completely still, his hands still holding hers, his thumb tracing steady, soothing circles against the back of her wrist.
“I was so lonely,” Daphne whispered, her head bowing under the crushing weight of her shame. “Two years ago, someone... someone I loved told me I was repulsive. He told me that nobody would ever look at a woman who works the night shift, that I reeked of sickness and failure, that I was fundamentally unlovable. And I believed him. God help me, Nathan, I believed every word he said.”
She tried to pull her hands away, retreating half a step to curl into herself and hide her face behind her arms.
The moment Nathan felt the resistance in her wrists, he didn't tighten his grip. He released her hands immediately, stepping back half a pace to give her space so she wouldn't feel cornered against the cold stone.
He lowered his hands to waist height, palms open, completely still.
“Daphne,” he said softly, his voice low and steady, an anchor in the freezing dark. “You don't have to hide from me. But you don't have to let me touch you, either. Take a breath. If you need me to step back, I will. If you’re willing, may I hold your hands?”
Daphne looked up through her tears. Seeing his open, unthreatening hands and the deliberate distance he had granted her, the suffocating panic in her chest eased its grip. He wasn't trapping her; he wasn't demanding anything she couldn't give.
Trembling, she nodded and reached forward on her own, laying her fingers across his open palms.
Nathan gently closed his fingers over hers, offering warmth without enclosing her against her will.
“When I joined that forum,” she continued, tears spilling freely down her cheeks, dripping onto the dark crepe of her gown, “I was so terrified that if you saw my real face—if you saw the dark circles, the exhaustion, the plain, ordinary nobody that I am—you would laugh. You would block me. You would turn away like everyone else. So I stole a picture from an influencer’s blog. I hid behind a stranger’s beauty because I thought my own soul wasn't enough to earn five minutes of your time.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, unable to bear the look of disgust she knew was coming.
“I’m sorry,” she wept. “I’m so sorry. I didn't come here to trap you. I didn't come to take anything from you. I just... I wanted to see you once. I wanted to hear your voice in person and tell you the truth, so you wouldn't think I died, so you wouldn't wonder why I disappeared. I am a nurse, Nathan. I work in a county trauma bay. I ride the subway in blood-stained scrubs, and I live in a studio above a laundromat. I am not the woman in that photograph. I am nothing.”
