Read Chapter 38: The New Space

The packing tape hissed as Jazz sliced through the final box, labelling it OFFICE—DO NOT DROP with a felt-tip pen. The movers had already hauled away the mismatched desks, the pull-out sofa where Tom had spent too many sleepless nights, and the plant she'd nearly killed three times. Now the flat echoed with every footstep, a hollow shell of the place where everything had begun.

Tom poked his head through the door, a crowbar in one hand and a triumphant grin on his face. "Found it."

"What?"

"The floorboard." He knelt by the window and wedged the crowbar into a seam in the wood. The board lifted with a groan, revealing the hollow where Priya had hidden her drive—the one that had saved their entire company. "Thought I'd leave it cleaner than we found it."

Jazz crossed the empty room and crouched beside him. The space beneath the board held nothing but dust and a single paperclip. "Feels like a lifetime ago."

"Three months." Tom set the board back in place and pressed it down until it clicked. "Feels longer. Also shorter."

She knew what he meant. Some mornings it felt like the break-in had happened to different people, two strangers who'd barely tolerated each other, tripping over wires and egos in this same room. Other moments—when Tom reached for her hand under a table or brushed past her in a corridor—it felt like yesterday, the terror and adrenaline of those final days still humming under her skin.

"Ready?" He stood and offered her a hand.

Jazz took it, letting him pull her up. The warm pressure of his fingers was familiar now, a comfort she no longer thought about until it was gone. "I think so."

---

The new office was on the fourth floor of a converted warehouse in Shoreditch, exposed brick walls and floor-to-ceiling windows that flooded the space with late-morning light. When Jazz and Tom stepped off the freight elevator, Priya was already there, directing a young man in a logoed t-shirt on the placement of a whiteboard.

"Left. No, more left. Perfect." Priya turned, and her face split into a grin. "You're late."

"We brought coffee," Tom said, holding up two cups. "And peace offerings."

"Late and presumptuous." Priya took one of the coffees anyway. "I've been here since seven. Someone had to make sure the furniture delivery didn't go to the wrong floor."

Jazz laughed and set down her bag, taking in the space. Desks lined the southern wall, monitors already glowing with login screens. A kitchenette gleamed in the corner. Her sketches for the next product iteration were pinned to a corkboard near her designated desk—she'd have her own desk now, a proper one, not a kitchen table she had to clear every time they wanted to eat.

The company had grown. Two junior developers would be starting next week. A designer she'd worked with at her old firm had emailed her last night asking if there was room for one more. Sterling's money had done more than save them—it had given them room to breathe, to dream bigger than survival.

"Where's the sign?" Tom asked, already walking toward a covered rectangle mounted above the reception area.

"Was waiting for you," Priya said. "Didn't feel right to do the honours alone."

Tom pulled the cord. The canvas dropped to reveal the logo they'd agonised over for three weeks: a simple geometric flame, merging two shapes into one, with their name beneath it. FLATMATES & FOUNDERS.

Jazz's throat tightened. It had been her idea, the name. A joke at first, thrown out during a late-night brainstorming session, but it had stuck. It was who they were—all of them, from the cluttered flat to the polished office, from rivals to partners to something none of them had been brave enough to name until that night in an emptied living room.

"Looks good," she said, her voice steadier than she felt.

"Looks brilliant," Priya corrected.

---

The morning passed in controlled chaos. Tom interviewed a contract developer over video while Jazz unpacked her desk, arranging exactly so: notebooks on the left, pens in the brass cup from Camden Market, the framed photo of the three of them outside Sterling's office on closing day. She was about to slot the photo in place when her coat, hanging on a hook behind her chair, caught her eye.

She reached into the pocket and pulled out the cufflink.

The silver was warm from being carried close, the tiny geometric engraving smooth under her thumb. She'd kept it there for three months, a habit now. Every time she reached for keys or a pen or her phone, her fingers brushed it, and she remembered Tom kneeling on the bare floor of their flat, offering her this simple promise.

"Planning to wear it?" Tom's voice came from behind her.

Jazz turned, cufflink still in her open palm. He was leaning against the doorframe of his office—his office, the one with a window and real walls—watching her with a soft expression she'd grown to know. "Just checking it's still there."

"It suits me better in your pocket than on my sleeve." He crossed the room and stopped in front of her. "Actually, I've been thinking about that."

"About my pockets?"

"About that cufflink. And what it meant." Tom reached into his own jacket and pulled out a small box wrapped in brown paper. "You didn't think I'd let you be the only one with a memento, did you?"

Jazz took the box, the paper crinkling as she unfolded it. Inside was a smooth circle of brass, warm to the touch, about the size of a bottle cap. On one side, engraved in clean lettering, was a simple phrase: WHAT WE BUILT.

"What is it?" she asked, turning it over in her fingers.

"The backing to my old cufflink. I swapped it out for a proper one before Sterling closed." Tom ran a thumb over the metal. "Decided it deserved a better job than sitting in a drawer."

"You—" Jazz pressed her lips together, overwhelmed by the symmetry of it. He'd carried her promise in his pocket every day, and she'd carried his. Three months of silent tokens, exchanged without a word.

"I freed the space," he said, and there was a hint of nervousness in his voice, "because I'd rather fill my pockets with what we're building than what we survived. But this—" he tapped the brass circle in her palm, " —is a reminder of exactly that. What we built. In that flat. From nothing."

Jazz stepped forward and kissed him. It was soft, unhurried, a punctuation rather than a question. When she pulled back, Tom was smiling the crooked smile she'd once found infuriating and now found essential.

"Keep it," she said, pressing the brass circle back into his hand. "Looks better on you."

---

They ordered takeaway for lunch, the three of them gathered around a box of samosas and containers of curry that Tom insisted were the best in East London. Priya talked animatedly about the hiring pipeline, about the developer who'd cried during his interview when she explained their culture of radical honesty, about the roadmap for the next release.

"And the hearing?" Jazz asked, gentle.

Priya's smile didn't falter. "Officially rescheduled for next month. My lawyer thinks the new evidence — the encrypted files on my drive — gives us real leverage. It's not just my word anymore. It's hers, documented."

"Your mother still—" Tom started.

"Still doesn't know I'm testifying about the coercion." Priya set down her samosa, her expression briefly clouded. "I'll tell her. When it's done. When I can show her I was brave instead of telling her." She looked around the office, at the desks and monitors and the logo above them. "This helped. Knowing I had somewhere to belong."

Jazz reached across the table and squeezed Priya's hand. "You always did. We just had to build you a proper chair."

Priya laughed, the tension cracking. "This chair is honestly too expensive. I looked up the receipt."

"Worth every pound," Tom said.

---

By early evening, the takeaway containers were empty and the last box had been unpacked. Priya made her excuses—a call with a potential hire in San Francisco that had to happen before midnight UK time—and gathered her things. At the door, she stopped and looked back.

"I just want to say something," she said. "A year ago, I was working for a woman I knew was wrong, and I was too afraid to do anything about it. Three months ago, I thought I'd ruined everything. And now—" she gestured at the office, at them, "—I get to be part of this. Thank you. For trusting me."

Tom crossed to her and hugged her, a brief, fierce embrace. Priya blinked hard as she pulled away. "Okay. That's enough feelings. I'm late for a call."

She left, the elevator dinging behind her.

The office fell quiet. Jazz stood at the windows, watching the streetlights flicker to life below, tinting the dusk orange. Tom came up beside her, hip against the low windowsill.

"Good day," he said.

"Good day." Jazz watched him in the reflection, the way the light caught his profile. "Can I tell you something? A little scary?"

He turned to face her fully. "Always."

"Before—the flat, the break-in, Priya's drive, all of it—I didn't know if I could do this. Not just the startup. Everything. I was so focused on not failing that I forgot I could actually succeed. And every day I'm waiting for that other shoe to drop. Sterling to withdraw. Shah to resurface. The market to turn."

Tom didn't interrupt. He just waited.

"But today? Standing here, watching Priya square up to her mother's world, watching you argue with a delivery driver about desk configurations—" she smiled, small and real, "—I think I finally believe it. We're not just surviving anymore. We're building something. And I want to keep building it with you."

Tom was quiet for a long moment. Then he took her hand, lacing his fingers through hers.

"When I knelt in that flat," he said, "I was terrified. Not of rejection, exactly. Of getting it wrong. Of messing up the one thing that finally felt right—us being partners. But I'm done being terrified. You've got my cufflink. I've got your coin. We've got a company with a name that makes investors smile and a team that trusts us enough to stick around."

He squeezed her hand.

"Our partnership," he said, "is the greatest success I've ever had. And everything else—the offices, the funding, the product—it just proves we can build anything when we build it together."

Jazz leaned into him, and he wrapped an arm around her shoulder. Below, Shoreditch hummed with life—couriers weaving through traffic, restaurants spilling light onto pavements, people beginning their evenings while they ended their business day.

"What now?" she asked.

"Movers are bringing the last of our personal stuff to your flat—our flat—tomorrow morning." Tom's lips brushed her temple. "But tonight, I'm taking my partner to dinner. Somewhere with tablecloths and candles and no takedown scripts anywhere in sight."

"I can work with that."

"It's a date," he said, and when she tilted her head up to meet his eyes, the word didn't scare her at all. It was just another promise they'd already kept.