He Gave Her My Home So I Took Back My Life Chapter 26
It was raining the day the restoration was completed.
Water ran from the newly repaired gutters. There was no red carpet in the courtyard, no reporters crowding the doors. The first people through them were the carpenters, students, and local residents who had taken part in the work.
I hung before-and-after photographs in the main hall.
The one in the farthest corner showed the house before we began—collapsed floorboards, broken shutters.
A child tipped his face up to me and asked, “If it used to be this broken, why not just tear it down?”
I crouched to his level.
“Because something being broken doesn’t mean it has no value.”
“Can everything be fixed?”
I thought for a moment.
“Not everything has to go back to exactly what it was. As long as it can stand safely on its own, it can have a new life.”
The child nodded as if he half-understood, then ran off to look at another display.
When I stood up, Mateo was watching me from across the crowd.
He didn’t come over to take my moment from me.
From the beginning of the project until now, every interview had gone the same way: he introduced himself only as an investor.
If reporters asked about the core vision, he would point them to me.
“Ask Nora,” he would say. “It’s her project.”
After the open house ended, we sat side by side on the back steps.
Mateo handed me a cup of hot coffee.
“Coffee again?” I asked, smiling.
“This time, I didn’t accidentally buy too much.”
“Then what is it?”
“An invitation to dinner.”
After that, he fell quiet. He didn’t use his eight years of waiting to pressure me into gratitude, and he didn’t ask if I was completely over the past.
He simply waited for my answer.
I held the warm cup in both hands, the steam rising to my face.
“Where?”
He blinked. “You’re saying yes?”
“I’m just asking where.”
That finally made him smile.
“You choose.”
For so long, other people had decided which hotel I would stay in, what jewelry I would wear, when I was supposed to give way.
Now, even for one dinner, someone was giving the choice back to me.
I thought for a moment.
“That little restaurant near campus.”
“It’s still open.”
“How do you know?”
“I stop by sometimes.”
He didn’t say who he went there to remember.
And I didn’t ask.
The rain had stopped. The last drop of water slid from the eaves.
I handed him my half-finished coffee and got to my feet.
“Mateo.”
“Yeah?”
“Seven o’clock. Don’t be late.”