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And Jessa’s funeral had come and gone.
It had rained that day.
I stood in the back row of the church, as promised, wearing black and holding a single magnolia. I hadn’t expected her family to acknowledge me, not after everything. But her sister approached me after the service, eyes rimmed red.
“She believed in you, you know,” she said, her voice shaking. “Even when we didn’t.”
I handed her the magnolia, and I let myself cry—not in guilt, but in grief. My friend was gone, and nothing would bring her back. But I could honor her.
So I did.
I created a fund in her name—The Jessa Lane Initiative—a partnership between Dominion Hall and a national digital justice organization. It offered grants for women rebuilding their lives after online betrayal—revenge porn victims, whistleblowers silenced by smear campaigns, and those manipulated into shame or silence through digital coercion.
Elias made the first donation in her name. I made the second.
Maybe it wasn’t enough. But it was a beginning.
As for ballet … I didn’t go back. Not in the way they wanted. I turned down the board’s offer to lift my suspension, thanked them kindly, and walked away with my spine straight and my head held higher than it had ever been on stage.
I still dance—sometimes in the studio Elias built for me in a sunroom overlooking the harbor, sometimes barefoot in the living room at Dominion Hall, music low, moonlight pouring through the windows. Not for an audience. Not for perfection. For myself.
Because I finally understand: ballet doesn’t get to define me.
I do.
And this morning—this bright, humid, breathless Charleston morning—Elias was up to something.
He’d woken me before dawn, kissed my bare shoulder, and told me to dress comfortably.
Then he blindfolded me.
Which, honestly, wasn’t even the strangest thing he’d done this week.
“You’re enjoying this too much,” I said, fingers clutched around the armrest as the SUV rolled down a road I couldn’t see.
“I am,” he admitted, chuckling. “But only because I know what’s waiting.”
We reached the airport within the hour, and when the blindfold came off, I blinked at the sunrise gleaming off his jet.
“Another secret mission?” I asked.
He only smirked. “Something like that.”
The flight was short. Smooth. No folders this time. No dossiers or burner phones. Just us.
And when we landed, I knew before the pilot said a word.
New Orleans.
I hadn’t been back since the day we moved my mom out. My chest ached before I even stood.
A car waited on the tarmac—sleek and black, because, of course, it was—and Elias held my hand the entire drive.
He didn’t speak until we stopped.
“Come with me,” he said.
I stepped out and froze.