The morning air was crisp, the kind that hinted at change. Emma stood at the edge of the studio's rooftop garden, suitcase beside her, sketchpad tucked under her arm. She wasn't leaving until the afternoon flight, but she needed this quiet—this breath between everything she had been and everything she was about to become.
She turned at the sound of footsteps.
Alexander emerged from the stairwell, dressed not in a tailored suit, but in a worn sweater and jeans. Comfortable. Grounded. Human.
"Emma," he said with a half-smile.
"I was wondering if you'd come."
He stepped beside her, hands in his pockets, looking out at the skyline.
"I have something for you."
He handed her a thick envelope—matte black with her name etched in silver. Inside, Emma found a series of folded sheets.
Blueprints.
At first, she thought they were one of his buildings. But as she opened each page, her breath caught.
These weren't his.
They were hers.
Projects she had designed over the past year—refined, reimagined, translated into formal architectural drafts. Elevations, floor plans, structure analyses—all rendered in perfect precision.
"I don't understand," she said, turning to him.
Alexander looked at her, his voice quiet. "I asked my firm's lead architect to go through your work. Not to correct it. Just to frame it. You were always building from instinct and emotion. I thought you should see what it looks like with bones underneath."
Emma's hands trembled. "You did this… for me?"
"You said once that you weren't sure if your work would ever belong in the real world," he said. "But you've already been shaping it. I just wanted to show you how solid your vision is."
She swallowed the lump rising in her throat. "This is… everything I never knew I needed."
"It's your foundation," he said simply. "Now go build on it."
They hugged then, brief but full of emotion neither could name. And when they pulled apart, Alexander added with a smirk, "Also, Lena threatened me. She said if I let you leave without a proper sendoff, she'd redesign my entire apartment in pink velvet."
Emma laughed, wiping her eyes. "That sounds like her."
Later, as Emma walked through JFK, suitcase rolling behind her and blueprints safely tucked into her carry-on, she felt taller. Not because of pride, but because of presence.
She wasn't leaving New York to escape.
She was expanding it.
Carrying her world into new rooms. New cities. New possibilities.
And for the first time, she believed it: she belonged there.