Page 110 of Oliver
Elena's raised eyebrow told me she didn't believe me for a second, but she didn't press. Instead, she set two flash drives on my desk.
"Finished editing Parisa and Darryl's wedding photos," she said, tapping the blue drive. "They came out great. Thought you'd want to see them before I send the link tomorrow."
"Thanks," I said, reaching for the drive. "You didn't need to bring them in person, though. An email would have been fine."
"Maybe. But this one...” She pushed the second drive, a shiny red one, toward me. “This one's for you."
I picked it up, turning it over in my hand. "What is it?"
"Just some shots I took." She shrugged, her tone casual. "While I was working. You know how I like to capture candids."
Something in her expression made my stomach tighten. "Elena..."
"Just look at them, Zahra." She backed toward the door. "And then maybe stop being as stubborn as he is."
Before I could respond, she was gone, leaving me staring at the small drive like it might explode in my hand.
With a sigh, I plugged it into my laptop and opened the folder that appeared. It contained a single slideshow file titled simply "Z&O."
I hesitated, then clicked.
The first image filled my screen—Oliver and me in the park, the day of our ice cream "date."
I froze, the breath catching in my throat.
It wasn’t staged, wasn’t posed.
It was me laughing at something he’d said, and him… God, the way he was looking at me.
Like the sun rose and set in my smile.
Like he hadn't even realized he was smiling back. Like I was an instinct he couldn’t fight.
Photo after photo flickered across the screen.
Oliver wiping a smudge of ice cream from my nose, his fingers careful, reverent.
Oliver’s hand ghosting over the small of my back as we crossed the street, a touch so natural, so thoughtless in its care and protectiveness that it shattered something in my chest.
Oliver leaning in to whisper something that made me flush, while the rest of the world blurred away behind us.
Me, standing at the fountain in Norman, laughing at the spray of water—and in that shot, it wasn’t just adoration in Oliver's gaze.
It was fear. Hope. Awe.
The kind of look people gave when they realized they were in the presence of something too rare, too sacred to name.
I hadn't even noticed that look in real time. I was too busy second-guessing everything, too scared to believe it could be real.
But it was real. It had always been real.
And now it was just another moment, trapped behind a glass screen. A ghost flickering through pixels.
I closed the slideshow midway and just sat there, my palms pressed to my chest, trying to hold myself together.
Tears blurred the edges of the screen, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t need to see more photos to know.
I felt it burning inside me.
