Read Chapter 37: The Leap

The flat was emptier than Jazz had ever seen it. Boxes were stacked by the door—mostly hers, a few of Tom's—and the walls had that strange, hollow sound that rooms make when they know they're about to be left. The afternoon light came in low and golden through the window, catching dust motes that hung in the air like tiny suspended planets.

She'd come straight from the Sterling offices, still buzzing from the handshakes and the champagne that someone had insisted on opening even though it was barely eleven in the morning. Her keys were still in her hand. She hadn't even taken off her coat.

Tom was standing in the middle of the living room, his hands shoved deep into his pockets, looking at the space like he was memorizing it. He'd changed out of his pitch clothes into a rumpled jumper, the one with the threadbare elbow, and his hair was doing that thing where it stuck up at odd angles because he kept raking his fingers through it.

"You're here," he said, his voice slightly hoarse.

"You said to meet you." She dropped her keys on the kitchen counter, the sound too loud in the empty room. "Is everything okay? Did something happen with the paperwork?"

"No, no, the paperwork's fine. Eleanor's confirmed for tomorrow, and I already cleared out my desk drawer." He attempted a smile, but it didn't quite reach his eyes. "I just—there's something I need to say. Before this place becomes someone else's."

Jazz felt her stomach tighten. They'd been through so much in these four walls: the failed pitch that first week, the all-nighters, the break-in that had nearly destroyed them, Priya's backup drive hidden under their floorboards. The flat had witnessed every disaster and small triumph, like a silent third partner in their chaotic enterprise.

"I'm listening," she said.

Tom took a breath. He crossed the room slowly, each step deliberate, until he was standing just a foot away from her. Then, before she could ask what he was doing, he lowered himself onto one knee.

"Tom—" Jazz's voice caught in her throat. "What are you—you don't have a ring. You're not—"

"No ring," he confirmed, his voice steady even as a faint tremor ran through his hands. He looked up at her, and his eyes were that same green-gold she'd first noticed in their university seminar, the ones that had annoyed her for years because they always seemed to be challenging something she'd said.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small object, closing his fist around it before opening his palm to reveal a familiar cufflink—gold, monogrammed with an anchor. The one he'd lost during their disastrous first pitch presentation months ago.

"This isn't a proposal," he said, a rueful smile tugging at his lips. "Not exactly. This is... this is a promise. Because I've been a fool for years, Jazz. And I need you to know that before we walk out of this flat for good."

Jazz's heart was pounding so hard she could feel it in her temples. She stared at the cufflink in his palm, remembered the morning of that pitch, how they'd ripped apart the flat looking for it, how she'd found it under the sofa cushion and tossed it to him without thinking. She hadn't known then that it would come to mean something.

"I didn't know how to say it before," Tom continued. "Every time I tried, something would happen—a deadline, a crisis, a break-in, a funding round. There was always a reason to wait. And then I realized that's just an excuse. There's never going to be a perfect moment. There's just this one, right now, in the flat where we almost killed each other and somehow didn't."

He held the cufflink up between them. "So here's my promise. I love you, Jazz. I think I've loved you since that night we argued about user flow diagrams until three in the morning and you were so angry that your eyes practically sparked. I promised myself I'd tell you today, before we close this door for the last time, because I can't spend another day pretending that you're just my business partner. Because you're not. You never have been."

Jazz felt the words land like stones in still water, each one rippling through her chest. She opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again. A laugh escaped her, half-breathless, half-disbelieving.

"You got down on one knee in an empty flat and gave me a cufflink," she said.

"It seemed appropriate." He was still holding it up, his hand unwavering. "It's the only thing I've got that's worth giving you right now. We're moving into a glorified storage closet for an office tomorrow. I owe my mother four hundred pounds because I spent my last grocery money on pitch materials. But I've got this, and I've got the truth, and I've got everything I feel for you. That's the deal. Take it or leave it."

Jazz looked at him—really looked at him. At the stubborn set of his jaw, the way his free hand was gripping his knee, the earnest, slightly ridiculous expression on his face. This was the man who had driven her absolutely mad for six years. The man who had stolen her ideas in university and then spent an entire semester pretending he hadn't. The man who had lied to save the company, who had confessed and come back stronger, who had stood beside her in front of investors and journalists and a rival who wanted to crush them.

The same man who was now kneeling on a dusty floor, offering her a cufflink and his heart.

"I feel the same," she said quietly. The words came out before she had fully processed them, but once they were in the air, she knew they were true. "God, I feel the same, and it's terrifying."

Tom's face broke into a grin so wide it transformed him. "Terrifying how?"

"Because we have a company together," she said, stepping closer. "Because we just got a million and a half pounds from people who believe in us. Because if we screw this up, it doesn't just break our hearts—it breaks our business. It breaks Priya's future, and the team's jobs, and everything we've been fighting for."

He was still kneeling. She reached down and took the cufflink from his palm, turning it over in her fingers. It caught the light, warm and solid.

"I'm not saying no," she continued. "I'm saying I need us to be smart about this. We can't just throw ourselves into something and hope it works. We have to be careful."

"Careful," he repeated. "I can do careful. I can do slow. I can do whatever pace you need, Jazz. I've waited this long."

She let out a shaky breath and held out her hand to help him up. He took it, and for a moment they stood face to face in the middle of the empty room, her hand still in his.

"We take it slow," she said. "We define what this means—for the company, for us. We talk about expectations. We don't let it interfere with deadlines or investor meetings or the launch."

"That sounds suspiciously like a business plan."

"It is a business plan. Our relationship is going to be run like a well-managed startup." She smiled despite herself. "I'm not having us be another statistic, Tom. I'm not watching this implode because we couldn't keep our personal feelings separate from the work."

He squeezed her hand. "Understood. No hand-holding in investor meetings. No romantic dinners before board calls. We'll calendar our feelings."

"Don't be an idiot."

"I'm trying to be romantic, but you're turning it into a project retrospective."

Jazz laughed—a real laugh, full and unguarded, echoing off the bare walls. She put the cufflink in her coat pocket, pressing it against her chest like a secret.

"Keep it," Tom said, watching her. "Until we have something better to give each other."

"For now, it's a start." She looked around the flat one more time. The marks on the wall where the server rack had been. The faint coffee stain on the floorboards from the night they'd spilled an entire pot and kept coding through the puddle. The window seat where she'd sat at two in the morning, watching London's lights shimmer through the rain, wondering if she was good enough to build something that mattered.

"No regrets about this place?" Tom asked, following her gaze.

"Regrets about the rent. Not about the memories." She turned back to him. "We built something here. We survived here. That has to count for something."

"It counts for everything." He was still holding her hand, and neither of them seemed in a hurry to let go. "Are we going to be okay, Jazz?"

She considered the question. The seed round was real, the story was theirs to tell, tomorrow they'd move into whatever sorry office space they could find for the next few weeks. Shah was still out there, and Priya still had a hearing to face, and nothing about their lives had suddenly become easy.

But standing in that emptied flat with Tom's hand in hers and a cufflink in her pocket, Jazz felt something she hadn't allowed herself to feel in months.

Hope.

"We're going to be more than okay," she said. "We're going to be great. We always are when we stop being idiots long enough to try."

Tom laughed, and it was the same laugh she'd heard a thousand times—warm, unguarded, slightly juvenile. In another life, it had infuriated her. Now, she wanted to hear it every day.

Outside, a van honked. The movers had arrived.

"So," Tom said, finally releasing her hand. "Shall we go see our new home? I hear it smells like industrial-strength bleacher."

"As long as we're in it together," Jazz said, and she was surprised by how easily the words came.

He held out his hand, palm open. She took it.

They walked out of the flat without looking back, leaving the empty rooms to the afternoon light and the quiet echo of everything they'd been through. Tomorrow there would be a new space to fill, an office to paint, a company to build, a story to tell. Tomorrow would bring investors and journalists and new challenges they hadn't begun to imagine.

Tonight, they had this: a cufflink, a promise, and the beginning of something neither of them had expected to find.

The door clicked shut behind them.