Daniel barely heard the last ten minutes of the meeting.
He sat at the long conference table, shoulders squared, posture immaculate, nodding at the right moments—but his attention was tethered to the single word glowing softly on his phone screen beneath the table.
Yes.
One word. Simple. Unassuming. And yet it had landed in his chest with the weight of something irreversible.
Marian hadn’t hesitated.
Hadn’t softened it with qualifiers or delayed it with careful distance.
She hadn’t asked for time.
She said yes.
Daniel exhaled slowly, grounding himself just as the meeting wrapped up. Chairs scraped back. Voices overlapped. Someone clapped him lightly on the shoulder as they filed out. He offered polite smiles, murmured professional goodbyes—but inside, his heart was pounding with a
