Julian
The restaurant looked exactly the way I'd imagined it a thousand times over the past two years, warm light spilling from the windows, the dining room filled with the low hum of conversation and clinking glasses, servers moving between tables with the practiced grace I'd spent months training them for. I stood near the kitchen pass, watching it all unfold, and felt something in my chest loosen for the first time in weeks.
"You should be out there," my sous chef, Marisol, said, nudging me toward the dining room. "This is your night, Julian. Go be seen taking credit for it."
"I will. Give me a minute."
I needed the minute, honestly, to steady myself before I stepped fully into a room full of people who'd come to celebrate something I'd built with my own hands, a room Sebastian woul
