The Silver Star Diner was never meant to be a cathedral.
It was a place of cracked vinyl, the smell of burnt coffee, and the frantic rhythm of a life lived in the margins.
It was the place where I had wiped down tables while dreaming of a world that didn't want me, and it was the place where Reid Sterling had first walked in to dismantle my reality with a five-million-dollar ledger.
But tonight, the diner was the only place in the world that mattered.
Reid had spent forty-eight hours straight not in a boardroom, but on his hands and knees on the Astoria sidewalk personally supervising the transformation.
He hadn't brought in a Manhattan wedding planner with silk drapes and white roses.
He had brought in the materials of our history.
The front of the diner was bathed in a soft, ethereal glow.
