Poor Boy Promised ”I’ll Marry You When I’m Rich” to Black Girl Who Fed Him — Years Later He Returned | HO

The board meeting went exactly the way they always did.

Conference room, 35th floor, glass walls, long table, views of the city that made other people take out their phones for photos. Charts on a screen, bullet points in blue. A US flag stood in the corner, the kind corporate decorators ordered in bulk, its edges too crisp to have ever seen weather.

“Another record quarter,” someone announced. “Net income up 18%. Thompson deal closed at $12 million above projections.”

Applause. Handshakes. A couple of back slaps.

“Isaiah, say something,” the chairman teased.

Isaiah stood, smiled like he’d practiced in the mirror. “You all did the work. I just sign papers.”

Laughter.

He said the right things. Growth, stability, long‑term vision. He clicked through a few slides he hadn’t slept to perfect. The words came autopilot, like the espresso machine: put in numbers, press a button, outcomes.

Inside, nothing.

Afterward, his business partner, Richard, cornered him near the window.

“You good, man?” Richard asked, lowering his voice. “You were here, but you weren’t here.”

“I’m fine,” Isaiah replied.

“You’ve been saying that for five years.” Richard folded his arms. “Ever since you started buying up South Chicago.”

Isaiah’s jaw tightened. “It’s a growth corridor.”

“There’s no profit there for years and you know it,” Richard said. “That’s not a growth corridor. That’s a money pit with boarded‑up windows.”

“I have my reasons.”

Richard studied him. “This about that girl? The one you’re looking for?”

Isaiah’s fingers twitched, as if reaching for the ribbon in his pocket that wasn’t there. He never carried the real one out of the house, just a keychain with a photo of it.

“Drop it, Rich,” he said quietly.

“Hey. Maybe she doesn’t want to be found,” Richard said, all gentle warning now. “Maybe this is just… twenty‑two‑year‑old survivor guilt and a childhood promise you should’ve let go of after puberty.”

“I said, drop it.”

Richard raised his hands. “Okay. Just don’t let this consume you. We’re playing with big numbers now. You can’t make $10 million decisions based on a playground crush.”

Too late. It had already consumed him.

Câu bản lề: Isaiah was building an empire on spreadsheets, but every blueprint still traced back to a girl behind a chain‑link fence.

He shut himself in his office that afternoon and pulled up a file on his computer instead of celebrating.

VICTORIA SEARCH – MASTER.docx

He scrolled.

Five years. Three private investigators. $287,400 spent.

The last report sat at the bottom, like a period at the end of a mercy killing.

We’ve exhausted all leads. “Victoria Hayes” is too common a name. Family left no forwarding address after 2008. Recommend cessation of search or broaden scope nationwide at significantly increased cost.

He’d had his attorneys set a budget cap at $300,000, the one number he’d never broken, though he’d been tempted. He was $12,600 away from it and had hovered on the edge of blowing past that line more times than he could count.

He minimized the file and pulled up a digital map of Chicago instead.

Twelve red pins glowed across South Chicago, all clustered within a two‑mile radius of one shabby rectangle: Lincoln Elementary School.

He zoomed in on the streets. Names he knew by heart now. 73rd, 74th, Colfax, Yates. Twelve properties. Twelve attempts to create reasons to show up. Twelve daily excuses to walk through a neighborhood he’d once crawled out of on shaking legs.

If Victoria’s still here, he thought, she’s somewhere in this grid, helping people. That’s who she is.

His phone buzzed with a calendar alert.

Community Meeting – South Chicago Community Center – 7:00 p.m.

He usually sent someone from Community Relations to handle these. They’d smile, listen, promise, take notes, and bring back a summary. Tonight, for no reason he could explain even to himself, he typed back:

I’ll attend personally.

As soon as he hit send, the memories unspooled, as they always did when anything dragged him toward that side of the city.

Winter.

Ten years old.

Chicago wind is different when you’re homeless. It doesn’t just sting your eyes; it gets into your bones, into the cracks of your teeth. For two weeks after his mother died and the first foster placement sent him back for being “too difficult,” Isaiah had slept in doorways and bus shelters, his back to cold brick, his stomach a locked fist.

By day fourteen, he was lightheaded from hunger. Trash cans smelled like food and rot and regret. He’d learned which convenience stores had clerks who looked away and which ones called 911 if you stared too long at the hot dogs spinning under the heat lamps.

He’d found Lincoln Elementary by accident, following the smell of cafeteria pizza and chicken nuggets. At lunchtime, he’d sit outside the chain‑link fence, watching kids in puffy coats run across blacktop dusted with snow, their breath fogging the air as they laughed and complained about math homework.

One teacher, a man in a thin parka, spotted Isaiah and walked over, his mouth set in a tight line.

“You can’t be here,” the man said. “You’re scaring the students.”

Isaiah tried to stand. His legs gave out. He grabbed the fence, knuckles white.

“I’m not—” His voice broke.

“You need to leave. I’ll call the office.” The teacher’s eyes flicked over Isaiah once more, and then he turned away.

That was when he saw her.

She stood near the blacktop line, a girl in a red sweater under a navy coat two sizes too big, dark skin, braids tied back with a bright red ribbon that flashed like a stoplight every time she turned her head. Nine, maybe. The laughter around her faded as she stared through the fence at him. She didn’t look frightened or disgusted.

She just looked sad.

(Before she ever handed him a sandwich, Victoria did something no one else had done—she didn’t look away.)

Three blocks from that fence, in subsidized housing with peeling paint and a busted radiator that clanked all night like it was trying to crawl out of its own pipes, Victoria Hayes lived with her grandmother and parents.

Her parents worked three jobs between them. Her father stocked shelves at a grocery store overnight and did warehouse shifts when he could get them. Her mother cleaned offices downtown in high‑rises like the one Isaiah now owned a unit in, vacuuming carpets outside doors that led to lives she’d never see.

Breakfast was instant oatmeal. Lunch was whatever the school gave her. Dinner was rice and beans, sometimes chicken thighs if the coupons lined up right. They survived, barely. On nights when the food stamps ran thin, her grandmother would make sweet tea with extra sugar, pour it into cloudy glasses, and pretend it was a treat instead of the only calories left.

“Baby,” her grandmother would say, stirring a chipped spoon around the glass, “we may not have much, but we always share what we got. That’s how the Lord stretches it.”

That voice echoed in Victoria’s head at recess as her friends tugged at her sleeve.

“V, come on!” Jasmine yelled, bouncing a basketball. “We’re picking teams! You’re on my side.”

But Victoria couldn’t move. Her eyes were locked on the boy outside the fence.

Up close, he looked worse. Too thin, like someone had drawn him in pencil and forgotten to fill him in. His coat was more of a jean jacket, no hat, no gloves. His lips were cracked and bleeding; his hands clung to the metal wires like they were the only thing anchoring him to the earth.

Jasmine followed her gaze and wrinkled her nose.

“What are you looking at?”

“That boy,” Victoria whispered.

“Oh. Him. He’s been there for days. Creepy.”

“He’s not creepy,” Victoria said, heat rising in her chest. “He’s hungry.”

“Not our problem.” Jasmine popped the basketball against the blacktop. “Come on, girl.”

“He’s just a kid like us.”

Victoria looked down at her lunchbox. Pink plastic, scratched from years of use. Inside: a peanut butter and jelly sandwich cut on the diagonal, an apple, a juice box, two little packs of crackers. It was her whole lunch. Her only food until dinner and maybe a glass of sugar‑heavy tea if things were tight.

Her grandmother’s words came back, simple and stubborn.

We always share what we got.

Victoria snapped the lid shut, grabbed the lunchbox, and walked away from the basketball court.

“Victoria, where are you going?” Jasmine called.

She didn’t answer.

At the fence, she stopped. The boy’s eyes tracked her movements with animal caution. Up close, she could see they were a muddy hazel, ringed with red.

“Hi,” she said softly. “I’m Victoria. You look hungry.”

His mouth opened, but no sound came out. Pride and pain and hunger tangled in his throat.

Victoria pushed the lunchbox through a gap in the fence. “Take it. It’s okay.”

He stared at her for one second too long, as if giving himself one last chance to say no. Then his hands snatched the sandwich and he devoured it in four bites. He didn’t taste it; he inhaled it. Tears spilled down his cheeks, hot against his frozen skin. He ate the apple, the crackers, tilted the juice box back and sucked every last drop of sweetness from it.

When it was gone, he looked up at her again.

“Thank you,” he whispered, voice shredded. “What’s your name?”

“Victoria,” she repeated. “Are you okay…?”

“Isaiah,” he croaked. “My name’s Isaiah.”

“Are you okay, Isaiah?”

He shook his head, a short, defeated motion.

Victoria’s heart cracked and rearranged itself. “I’ll bring you lunch tomorrow too.”

His eyes widened like she’d told him he’d just won the lottery. “You will?”

“I promise.”

The bell rang. She had to go. She took three steps, then turned back to look at him. Once. Twice. Three times. He was still standing there, clutching the empty juice box like evidence that what had just happened was real.

(On a playground where kids fought over who got the last chicken nugget, a nine‑year‑old just promised a starving stranger tomorrow.)

Isaiah blinked in his office. The memory snapped off like a projector reel ending.

He checked the time. 6:45 p.m.

The meeting started at seven.

He grabbed his coat from the back of the chair, then hesitated. He opened his desk drawer one more time and touched the glass over the ribbon.

“I’m coming, Victoria,” he murmured. “I don’t know if you’re there, but I’m coming.”

What he didn’t know was that twenty‑two years later, in a community center with flickering fluorescent lights and a US flag taped crooked to the front of a folding table, Victoria was watching the time too—and thinking about him.

Isaiah pulled into the cracked parking lot of the South Chicago Community Center at 6:55 p.m. The building was an old brick box with chipped paint, big metal doors, and a banner that read COMMUNITY MATTERS losing its battle against the wind. A couple of kids shot hoops on a rim with no net. Someone had taped a paper sign to the glass door with blue painter’s tape:

COMMUNITY MEETING – 7 PM – ALL WELCOME

Inside, the smell hit him immediately: old coffee, sweat, bleach, dust, and something fried from a fundraiser long past. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, one blinking like it had a nervous tic.

A woman with locs pulled into a bun sat behind a plastic folding table at the entrance, a composition notebook open, a cheap pen in hand, a little US flag on a stick stuck into a chipped mug beside her.

“Name?” she asked.

“Isaiah Mitchell,” he said. “Mitchell & Associates.”

Her eyes widened just a fraction, then cooled, shutters closing. “The developer,” she said, not quite a question.

“Yes.”

“You’re actually here. In person.”

“I am.”

“Most developers send lawyers.”

“I’m not most developers,” he said.

“Mm.” She tore off a label from a sheet, wrote his name, and pushed it toward him. “We’ll see.” The little flag in the mug trembled when something slammed in the gym next door.

Isaiah peeled the sticker and slapped it onto his suit jacket. Heads turned as he walked into the room. About fifty people sat in rows of metal folding chairs: older folks in church clothes, young parents juggling toddlers, teens in hoodies, activists with clipboards and sharp eyes.

Whispers slid through the room.

“That him?”

“Millionaire dude from downtown.”

“About to bulldoze everything, watch.”

Isaiah took a seat in the back. His $4,000 suit felt obscene under the water‑stained ceiling, like wearing a tuxedo to a food bank.

At the front of the room, a woman in her sixties stepped forward. She wore a navy blazer with a pin shaped like a tiny US flag near the lapel, glasses on a chain, and an expression that said she’d seen every flavor of promise and lie and could tell the difference in five words or less.

“Good evening, everybody,” she said into a handheld mic that squealed before settling. “I’m Dorothy Carter, president of the community board. Tonight we’re here to talk about the proposed development by Mitchell & Associates.”

A low murmur rolled through the chairs.

“Now, we’ve heard promises before,” Dorothy said. “Some of them came tied up in red, white, and blue. Some of them left us worse off than when they came.”

A couple of people clapped. Someone said, “That’s right.”

“Mr. Mitchell will present his plans, and then we’re going to ask questions. Real questions. Not the kind you rehearse in a PR office.” She looked back at Isaiah. “Mr. Mitchell?”

He stood, walked to the front, and felt fifty pairs of eyes weigh him like a scale.

He opened his laptop and clicked the projector awake. Architectural renderings filled the pull‑down screen: new buildings, clean lines, green spaces, a renovated center.

“Good evening,” he said. “I’m Isaiah Mitchell. I grew up not far from here.”

People shifted. That wasn’t the line they’d expected from a man in his kind of shoes.

“I know what broken promises look like,” he continued. “I know what it’s like when somebody stands up in front of you with a suit and a smile and tells you everything’s going to be fine, and then six months later your rent’s doubled and your grandma’s on a waiting list that never moves.”

A low hum of agreement.

“I’m not here to sell you luxury condos,” Isaiah said. “I’m proposing affordable housing—sixty percent of the units reserved for current residents, at current rent rates, with legal protections in place. This center will be fully renovated: new heating and cooling, new roof, expanded rooms for programs. All funded by my company. We’ll create a job‑training program tied to the development. We’ll hire locally. We’ll invest in this neighborhood’s people, not just its land.”

Hands shot up before he finished.

Dorothy pointed to a man near the front, late thirties, mechanic’s jacket.

“Yes, Marcus.”

“‘Affordable’ to who?” Marcus asked. “Because what’s affordable to you, Mr. Millionaire, and what’s affordable to a lady on minimum wage are two different universes.”

“Units will be priced based on area median income,” Isaiah said. “We’re working with the housing authority to—”

“So you’re telling me a formula with a nice name means my mama won’t get pushed out?” Marcus cut in.

“I’m telling you we’re writing it into the contracts that current residents can stay at what they’re paying now,” Isaiah replied. “And I’m telling you I’m paying lawyers a lot of money to make sure nobody can wiggle out of that.”

An older woman stood up without being called on.

“What about the businesses we already got?” she demanded. “My niece runs the hair braiding shop on 76th. Last developer promised she could stay. Six months later, she’s standing outside her own shop with a box because the rent jumped to the sky.”

“We’re offering lease protections for current businesses,” Isaiah said. “And relocation assistance if any have to move during construction. Written. Enforceable. Not just on a flyer.”

Another voice cut through from the middle row. Clear, steady, edged with something he recognized but couldn’t place.

“How do we know you’ll keep these promises?” the woman asked. “Developers always say the right thing and then gentrification arrives in a different suit.”

Isaiah turned toward the voice, and the room narrowed to a tunnel.

She stood there, early thirties, professional clothes that had been worn a lot but cared for, natural hair pulled back, notepad in hand. She spoke with the cadence of someone used to calming scared people and confronting difficult ones.

“I grew up in this neighborhood,” she continued. “I’ve watched people get priced out, pushed out. I’m a social worker at this center. I sit with kids who sleep in cars and on couches. Your buildings don’t mean anything if the people who need this place most get driven away.”

Their eyes met.

Hazel to deep brown.

Isaiah’s heart stuttered, then slammed against his ribs. The world went distant, like someone had turned the volume down.

No. It couldn’t be.

Could it?

“You’re absolutely right to be skeptical,” Isaiah said slowly. “May I ask your name?”

She frowned, wary. “Victoria Hayes.”

The name hit him like a truck.

His grip slipped on the edge of the table; he had to catch himself.

After five years of searching databases and yearbooks and public records and tax rolls, after $287,400 spent on dead ends and “no forwarding address,” she was standing fifteen feet away.

And she didn’t recognize him at all.

(The girl he’d been chasing on paper for five years had just stood up and challenged him to his face—and had no idea who he was.)

Dorothy’s voice sliced through the silence. “Mr. Mitchell, you okay?”

Isaiah forced air into his lungs. “Yes,” he said, though it came out too sharp. He looked back at Victoria. “Ms. Hayes… did you go to Lincoln Elementary? About twenty‑two years ago?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Yes. How do you know that?”

“Do you remember feeding a boy through the fence?” Isaiah asked, voice shaking now, public be damned. “A white boy. Ten years old. Every day for six months.”

Victoria went absolutely still. The notepad slipped from her fingers and hit the floor with a soft slap.

The room disappeared for her as surely as it did for him. For a moment, there was just the echo of winter and a fence and a too‑thin boy and a lunchbox.

“Isaiah,” she whispered.

Her hand flew to the small silver locket at her throat.

Isaiah nodded. “It’s me,” he said, his throat raw. “I came back.”

The room erupted in whispers, chairs scraping, people muttering, confused.

“You’re alive,” Victoria breathed.

“I told you I’d come back when I was rich,” he said, managing a crooked smile that didn’t feel like his.

Her hand covered her mouth; tears flooded her eyes. Dorothy, who had seen a lot in community meetings but never this, lifted the mic.

“Uh… we’re gonna take a fifteen‑minute break,” she announced. “Everybody step into the hall, get some water, call your cousins, whatever you need to do.”

The crowd spilled out in a chaotic mess of side‑eyes and theories and “You heard that?” and “Girl, did you see the way he looked at her?”

Isaiah and Victoria didn’t move.

They just stared.

Finally, when the room had mostly emptied and the hum of the soda machine was louder than the hallway chatter, they walked toward each other, drawn by something older than either of them could explain.

“Isaiah,” she said again, voice breaking completely now.

“Victoria,” he replied.

She laughed and sobbed in the same breath. “I looked for you after you left,” she said. “I used to walk past that fence thinking you’d be there again.”

“I looked for you too,” he said. “For five years, I hired people to look. You were gone.”

“You’re really here,” she whispered.

“I kept my promise,” he said. “Took me a while. But I’m here.”

Trembling, she reached for her locket and snapped it open. Inside, pressed flat and carefully folded, was half of a red ribbon.

Isaiah dug out his keychain. Attached to the ring, protected in a small clear case, was the other half.

They held them up side by side.

A perfect match, jagged edges kissing after twenty‑two years as if no time had passed at all.

Both of them started crying.

(The city had added millions of bricks and windows since they’d last met, but the two halves of one cheap ribbon still fit together like they’d never been apart.)

They retreated to Victoria’s small office to escape the curious eyes swarming the hallway. Isaiah barely registered the old IKEA desk, the metal filing cabinet, the mismatched chairs, the printout of a US flag on the wall with a kid’s crayon heart drawn over it. All he saw was her.

She sat, but her leg bounced, energy with nowhere to go. Isaiah perched on the edge of the visitor’s chair, hands clasped so tight his knuckles went white.

“I can’t believe it’s you,” she said. “I can’t believe you’re alive.”

“I almost wasn’t,” he answered, honest. “If it wasn’t for you.”

She shook her head. “I just gave you lunch, Isaiah.”

He leaned forward. “No. You gave me everything.”

He swallowed hard. “Do you… remember all of it?”

“Every day,” she said. “I’ve thought about you every single day for twenty‑two years.”

His vision went blurry. “Tell me,” he said. “Tell me what you remember.”

She closed her eyes and let the years fall away. “First day, you looked so small,” she began softly. “So scared. I’d seen you there for three days already, sitting outside the fence like you were waiting for someone who never came. My friends kept saying you were creepy, dangerous. But I saw your eyes. You weren’t dangerous. You were dying.”

She opened her eyes again, glossy with tears. “I had a PB&J that day. An apple. Juice. Crackers. It was all I had until dinner, but you needed it more.”

“I ate it in four bites,” Isaiah said, a tear slipping down his cheek.

“I know,” she said. “I watched. And I saw you cry because somebody finally saw you.”

“You came back the next day,” he said.

“I promised I would,” she replied.

She stood, paced to the window that looked out over the cracked basketball court. “Second day was harder,” she said. “First day was impulse. Second day was choice. I knew what I was doing. I knew if I packed two lunches, there might not be enough for dinner. So I packed one. And I gave it to you again.”

Isaiah’s chest hurt. “You went hungry.”

“Sometimes,” she admitted. “Sometimes my grandma made more rice to stretch things. Sometimes she just put extra sugar in our tea.”

He sat in stunned silence.

“Day three, my grandma notices,” Victoria continued, a tiny smile tugging at her lips. “She watches me pack extra food instead of sneaking it.”

“What did she do?” Isaiah asked.

“She didn’t yell. She didn’t say we couldn’t afford it. She just sighed, shook her head, and put another sandwich in my lunchbox,” Victoria said. “By week two, my whole family knew about ‘the boy at the fence.’ They took extra hours, made more food, so I could keep feeding you.”

Isaiah pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. “Your family was struggling too.”

“We were,” she said. “But you were poorer. And you were alone.”

She sat again, closer this time. “Do you remember the conversations?” she asked.

His lips curved. “Every one of them.”

“You’d ask what I learned that day,” she said. “I’d tell you about multiplication tables and Junie B. Jones and how the principal mispronounced my name again.”

“You were so smart,” he said. “You didn’t just hand me food. You handed me your day. Your stories. Your world.”

By week three, he remembered, other kids started teasing Victoria for talking to “the creepy fence boy.” Jasmine tried to drag her away. Boys made jokes. She stopped playing at recess and spent those twenty‑five minutes pressed against cold metal, talking to him like he was sitting across a cafeteria table instead of outside in the wind.

“Remember Mrs. Patterson?” Victoria asked.

He frowned, then the memory slotted in. “The teacher with the cat sweaters?”

“She caught me,” Victoria said, chuckling wetly. “Fourth week. She saw me push food through the fence. She marched over like she was gonna snatch my whole life.”

“What happened?”

“I begged her not to stop me,” Victoria said. “I told her you’d starve.”

“And?” Isaiah asked.

“She looked at you,” Victoria said. “Really looked. Then she walked away and later that week I started finding extra snacks in my cubby. Granola bars. Little bags of chips. She never said a word.”

Isaiah exhaled, a shaky laugh. “People were kinder than I thought.”

“Some of them,” she said. “Then winter hit and the city got mean again.”

Isaiah could still feel the way the cold had sliced through him that year. “Temperature dropped to, what, fifteen?” he asked.

“Fifteen,” she confirmed. “You were out there in that little jean jacket, no gloves. Your lips were blue. I went home that day and tore my room apart.”

“You gave me your coat,” Isaiah said quietly.

“I gave you my only good coat,” she corrected. “And my dad’s gloves, and the scarf my aunt sent from Georgia, and a blanket from my bed.”

“I told you you’d be cold,” he remembered.

“And I lied,” she said, a small smile. “I told you I had another one. I didn’t.”

“You froze for me,” he said.

“I shivered through recess in a sweater for two months,” she said. “Got sick. My grandma almost dragged me to the ER, but we couldn’t afford it. She made home remedies instead. I don’t regret it.”

He shook his head in disbelief. “I didn’t know any of that.”

“Of course you didn’t,” she said. “You were busy not dying.”

Then came the fever. The cough that shook him so hard he saw black. The days when he couldn’t make it to the fence. When he did, he’d slide down to the ground, back against concrete, the world spinning.

“I thought I was going to die,” Isaiah admitted.

“So did I,” Victoria said. “I ran home, begged my grandma to help ‘my boy at the fence.’ She came. She brought medicine and soup and tea, and we nursed you back from the other side of that fence.”

“Your grandma saved my life,” he said.

“We both did,” she replied. “That medicine was supposed to be for my granddad’s arthritis. She gave it to you instead.”

He let that settle. This wasn’t charity. It had been sacrifice.

“Why?” he asked finally. “Why did you keep doing it? Six months. A hundred and twenty days. Even when you were hungry. Even when you were cold. Why?”

She looked him straight in the eye. “Because you deserved to live,” she said simply. “And because nobody else was helping you.”

Silence hung between them, thick and holy.

“The last day,” Isaiah said softly. “I still remember. You brought so much food.”

“I knew you were leaving,” she said. “Mrs. Patterson told me they’d finally found you a foster home that would stick. I had one more lunchtime with you. I packed everything I could fit. Sandwiches, cookies, fruit, crackers. Like I could fill six months of hunger in twenty minutes.”

“You gave me your ribbon,” he said, touching the case on his keychain.

She reached up, fingers on her locket. “My favorite ribbon,” she said. “From my hair. I cut it in half. Tied one piece on your wrist and kept the other. I wanted you to remember there was at least one person in this world who cared if you lived.”

“I never took it off,” he said. “Not once. Not for twenty‑two years.”

Her shoulders shook. “You kept it.”

“I kept everything,” he said. “Every memory. Every word. Every moment.”

They stood at the same time and stepped into each other’s arms. The hug was awkward for half a second, then perfect, like two puzzle pieces clicking together. They held on as if twenty‑two years of hunger and grief and loneliness could be squeezed out through the spaces between their fingers.

“Thank you,” Isaiah whispered into her hair. “For saving me. For surviving. For being here.”

When they finally pulled back, both were laughing and crying at once.

“I made you a promise that day,” he said, wiping his face with the back of his hand.

She sniffed. “You said you’d get rich and marry me.”

“I meant it,” he said.

She laughed, the sound bubbling up despite everything. “We were ten years old.”

“I still meant it,” he said quietly.

Something flickered between them. Recognition. Something they’d both been carrying alone.

A knock broke it.

“Y’all okay in there?” Dorothy’s voice came from the other side of the door. “People are waiting.”

Victoria glanced at Isaiah, then called, “Five more minutes!”

She turned back to him. “What do we do now?”

He shook his head, exhaling. “I don’t know,” he said. “But I’m not losing you again.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said.

“Good,” he replied. “Because we’ve got twenty‑two years to catch up on. And a room full of people waiting to see if I’m the villain or not.”

She smiled. “One more question before we face the crowd,” she said. “This project. Is it really about helping people, or is it about finding me?”

He hesitated, then chose the thing she’d given him all those years ago: honesty.

“Both,” he admitted. “I wanted to help because of what you taught me. But I also hoped… if I kept showing up here, someday I’d see you.”

“You built all this looking for me,” she said softly.

“I built all this becoming the person you believed I could be,” he answered.

Her eyes filled again. “You did it,” she said. “You became something amazing.”

“Because of you,” he replied.

They straightened their clothes, wiped their faces as best they could.

“Ready?” she asked.

Isaiah held out his hand.

“Together?” he said.

She took it. “Together.”

(The boy who once couldn’t stand up without a fence now walked back into a skeptical room, steady only because her hand was in his.)