Re: Rooftop.
"I feel better," she said with a wealth of honesty. "You were right when you said that I couldn't let Alex manipulate me." She paused to take a a small sip of her drink. Brielle did not seem like a woman accustomed to champagne flutes, despite the life she led in New York. It seemed like she could nurse this lone glass for hours, long past the point in time when it went warm and flat and useless. For some reason, the idea made her sad - it felt like something her mind would have concocted before today, before everything felt new and full of life. She forgot the brush of sad nostalgia a fraction of a moment later, it couldn't grow in her now. Ivy ensured that.
She lifted spring dusted eyes back to Jack with a smaller smile. "He contacted me again, you know.. Alex.. he seemed sad that I was gone, and.." Shaking her head, she crushed that sympathy with a straightening of ballet trained shoulders and another taste of wine. "He told me that his threats against Wren's child were never legitimate, but if that's true, then he only said it to control me and I.." Her eyebrows knit, a memory fighting through of some other time she'd been controlled.
"Anyway, I wanted to say thank you. You helped me wake up." She slid closer, a smooth dancer's sway, until she nudged his knee where he knelt on that ledge. Raising her hand in a display of caution, the movement was agonizingly slow when she watched his face. She used those soft, unspread fingers to cover his good eye, giving her an image of just the scarred side. She didn't think he was self-conscious about it, but she wanted him to know. "You're a handsome man, Jack."