I've now read the opening, midpoint kiss, rupture, and the entire ending in full prose, and verified every canon/form fix plus the money/date anchors. The romance is earned end to end. But my independent number audit surfaced concrete contradictions in the book's signature domain — precise money and dates — that all three prior critiques and every tracker missed. Report follows.

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VERDICT: FINAL-CANDIDATE: REPAIR-FIRST
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The book is structurally, tonally, and emotionally converged. Class-size (four pairs / eight people / eight easels) and the assignment cards (all in Odile's capitals, Week 8 card "LET THE ROOM DO ITS PART" now exists) are genuinely fixed on the page, not just in the trackers. The Ch1 dialogue-diagnosis simile is gone. June's arithmetic now runs through her painter's eye ("holes, thin patches, places where wanting had been scumbled over need," Ch20). The rupture, confession, and coda all land. **But the manuscript ships three unreconciled precision contradictions — in money and dates, the exact domain that is this book's craft identity — and one is the literal last line.** These are cheap to fix and must be fixed before final assembly. This is not a length checkpoint and not a craft failure; it is a targeted repair-first gate.

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HIGH-LEVERAGE FINDINGS:

1. Dana/Ridgewood payment is $980 for the first half of the book and $800 for the last — including the closing sentence.
   - evidence:
     • Ch20 anchors $980 four times, with explicit arithmetic and a verbatim text:
       - "Dana: first month plus one month deposit, $980 all in with the wall, by December 10." (2723)
       - notebook: "DEC 10--DANA, $980." (2731)
       - text to Dana: "$980 by the 10th." (2793)
       - the math is stated: room $340 + wall $150 = $490/mo (2651, 2739, 2765); first + one-month deposit = $980.
     • Ch23/Ch24 then say $800 three times:
       - "She wants the eight hundred for the room and the wall share by the tenth, which is Thursday." (3217)
       - "an eight-hundred-dollars-by-Thursday problem." (3486)
       - final line: "She had a long cold way to go and eight hundred dollars due Thursday, and she went." (3498)
     • Same debt, same payee, same date (Dec 10 = Thursday). The canon sheet itself encodes both (fact 87 = $980; fact 111 = $800), so this was baked in, not a stray typo.
     • Why it's high-leverage: this is the book whose signature move is counting toggle bolts, label heights, and "$32 x 40 x 3 = 3,840 gross" (2142). It trains the reader to track money, then closes on a figure that contradicts a texted number three chapters back. It's the same failure mode (imprecision in a hyper-precise book) that blocked Draft 0 via class-size — now sitting on the last line.
   - revision order:
     • Reconcile to $980 (the anchored, arithmetic-supported figure). Change the three Ch23/Ch24 instances: 3217 "the eight hundred" → "the nine eighty"; 3486 "eight-hundred-dollars-by-Thursday" → "nine-hundred-eighty-by-Thursday"; 3498 "eight hundred dollars due Thursday" → "nine hundred eighty dollars due Thursday."
     • (If the drafters prefer the $800 cadence for the close, then instead rework Ch20's deposit math in all four places incl. the text — more edits, less clean. Recommend reconciling to $980.)

2. June's lease "ends December fifteenth" in Act 1 and "ended January 31" in Act 3, with no bridge.
   - evidence:
     • "Her lease ended December fifteenth" (Ch1, 9); "'My lease ends December fifteenth'" (Ch1, 121); "'My lease is up in December either way'" (Ch9, 1286); "Mid-December did not [have a clean arithmetic sound]" (Ch11, 1563). Premise/canon fact 2 binds mid-December, and Ch1 makes it a load-bearing clock: "Eight Tuesdays from the twentieth is December eighth... So it fits. With a week to spare." (121–125)
     • Ch20: "an apartment whose lease ended January 31 whether she decided anything or not" (2651); "out January 31 per the lease... typed January 31 twice" (2795).
     • The plot needs January housing (Ridgewood keys Jan 2, Kessler Jan 4), so the ending's late-January date is what the story requires — but it was never squared with the opening's Dec 15, and a Dec 15 lease would leave June homeless for two-plus weeks.
   - revision order:
     • Keep Ch1's Dec 15 clock (do NOT move it — "a week to spare" depends on it and it's the emotional engine of Act 1). Bridge in Ch20 with a month-to-month holdover: 2651 → "an apartment she'd been holding month-to-month since December, $1,475, the lease itself long over"; 2795 → "out January 31, the notice the month-to-month required." This reconciles both dates and adds a true character beat — she let it roll because she couldn't decide, which is her arc.

3. [Verify] Suffolk rent is "twenty-nine hundred dollars a month" in Ch6 and "$2,310" in Ch11.
   - evidence:
     • Ben, Ch6: "The Suffolk apartment is three-twenty... We are considering paying twenty-nine hundred dollars a month to live in this gallery minus the ceiling." (855)
     • Ben, Ch11 (reading the listing): "'Rent two thousand three hundred ten, heat included.'" (1561); canon fact 44 = $2,310.
   - revision order:
     • Lower confidence than #1–2 (Ch6 is Ben's joke at the pre-formal broker-text stage; a reader may absorb it as a number that firmed up). But align it: change Ch6's "twenty-nine hundred" to "twenty-three-ten" (or make the round-up transparently a bit). If kept, it must not read as the firm figure.

META: The precision audit that fixed class-size and cards demonstrably did not cover money/dates. The correct pre-final action is not "swat these three" but "run a money/date reconciliation pass across every dollar and date anchor" ($49,500 / $1,180 / $1,475 / $32 / $3,840 / $2,643 / $300 / rents / all December dates), because the same audit that cleared counts never checked currency or the lease clock.
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LENGTH / POSITIONING:
- craft diagnosis: 62K is deliberate compression, not missing development. The scenes are dense; there is no padding to cut and no high-leverage scene to add. The engine is that these two careful people never get unstructured time together until the confession — Ch12/Ch14 are framed as logistics because that is the only way they let themselves be alone, and the Ch22 booth works precisely because it is the first time they talk with nothing to do. Forcing a couple-hang to reach 75K would defuse the confession and import the reading guide's named risk ("cozy low stakes becoming inert"). I find NO concrete expansion that improves the book more than it damages the compression, so the 24-chapter directive stands. The one true montage (Ch18) is the weakest stretch but functional on three threads; do not convert it into a couple scene.
- market/promise diagnosis: no promise is broken by the length. The book delivers romance (together, terms set), found-family (cohort textured, Ruth's private read pays), vocation (June painting; Theo's first finished thing), and a reveal that rewards rereading. The asterisk is commercial, not craft: 62K sits below the ~70K floor where trade-romance acquisitions bounce, and no line pass closes that gap. Its register matches its quiet, short comps rather than its warm-romance comps.
- final-report wording needed: "Final candidate is 62,307 words, ~13K below the 75K–88K premise floor. This is a disclosed positioning decision, not a craft defect: the compression is load-bearing for the confession and the reading guide's anti-inertia caps. Accept as a business risk with eyes open (quiet book-club fiction) or re-scope the market — but do not paper the gap with generic scenes." This wording should be in the final report regardless of the repair.
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ENDING / STANDALONE PAYOFF:
- verdict: EARNS — on romance, cohort, vocation, Odile reveal, and standalone, with no reliance on off-book future events. Blocked from "final" only by the Finding-1/2 continuity contradictions, not by the ending's construction.
- evidence:
  • Romance earned, not asserted: the asymmetry is the engine — "Every Tuesday I stood in her room knowing she could throw me out, and you stood in it knowing she couldn't." (2405) The confession sets terms before intimacy: "Don't be useful right now" (3027); "I said no to Tasker Friday morning... Before your texts... I'm staying, Theo. It isn't for you." (3037–3039); June initiates the kiss "because the terms are set... Not instead of them." (3121)
  • Odile reveal rereads cleanly and does NOT absolve: the night-one ledger "Park, J. - Brennan, T. Last slot." predating the pairing (3440); her only concession is two words — "'No,' she agreed. 'It wasn't.'" (3455); and the cost is physical, not rhetorical — "June tore the page clean out... The binder kept its shape and lost its first night. Odile's hand stayed where the paper had been." (3456), sealed wordlessly by "laid one finger on the drawer that held After Class, not opening it." (3462)
  • Standalone / no future-event crutch: the book ends June materially cold and unpaid — dirty rinse jar carried home "in training," the good sweater "not the warm coat," Kessler money not until March. The romance does not fix the money, which is the honest close (once the dollar figure is reconciled).
  • Vocation lands by object, not speech: the label honed live to "After Class. Two underpaintings of one room, finished together." (3279), the seam left bare, Theo's first finished thing faced to the brick and turned by June's own hand (3420–3430).
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REMAINING RISKS:
- Odile's cost is understated by design. Her total on-page reckoning is two words plus a torn page; a reader can feel she "gets away with it" because she is retiring out of a binder that is "closed out" anyway. This is the strongest dissenting argument against the ending (see below). It is a defensible refusal-of-villainy choice, mitigated by the thumb-on-corner / empty-hand staging, and NOT a repair-first item — but it is the sharpest legitimate reader complaint.
- Ruth's Ch6 ask ("who can she tell who isn't you?" / Theo: "I'll find one" / "It should be one she can use") is paid by Ruth self-providing the route in Ch20 ("If a message needs to move without going through Theo, it can move through us," 2681), not by Theo delivering it. The reader's NEED is met and it is thematically apt (the non-Theo channel can't come from Theo), but Theo's specific promissory note is never explicitly retired. Minor; watch, don't churn.
- Outcome is telegraphed from Ch9 (she stays; they resolve). The book's surprises are the discovery mechanism and the emotional turns, not the plot outcome — acceptable for the register, but it is the low-propulsion cost of the compression.
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DO NOT TOUCH:
- Ch17 asymmetry speech ("...she could throw me out, and you stood in it knowing she couldn't") and the "attribution revised" wall-label analogy — the whole book's argument, delivered at speed. (2357, 2405)
- Ch16 fear canvases: "You made it mine... It was always yours. You told it that way. I just heard it late." and June's bulb over the blank ground. (2287–2289, 2275) Thesis as craft, zero sermon.
- Ch22 confession ordering and "Don't be useful right now"; the stay stated before his texts. Re-touching risks a boyfriend-driven reading.
- Ch24 torn-page staging (thumb / perforation / "lost its first night" / finger on the drawer). It is the entire Odile-cost landing; any re-angle degrades it.
- Mara/Luis un-translation ("There," Luis said... Mara start to explain him and stop, 3362–3364) and the blue-dish placement — the best cohort arc.
- June's stay scaffolding sequence in Ch20 (Asha consent, decline before noon, W-9, Dana yes, landlord notice) — the earned-stay proof.
- The now-consistent class-size numbers and the eight capitalized assignment cards, including Week 8. Do not let the money/date pass disturb them.
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NEXT ACTION:
- Run one numeric/date reconciliation pass, then assemble the final candidate. Concretely: (1) change the three Ch23/Ch24 "$800/eight hundred" instances to $980 to match Ch20's anchored math and texted figure; (2) bridge Ch20's lease references to a month-to-month holdover so Dec 15 and Jan 31 stop contradicting; (3) reconcile Ch6's "$2,900" Suffolk figure to $2,310; (4) sweep every remaining dollar/date anchor for drift, since the class-size/card audit never covered currency or the lease clock. Do NOT open a chapter, add a scene for length, or re-touch any DO NOT TOUCH item. After the pass, the book is a legitimate final candidate at a disclosed 62K positioning risk.

Strongest dissent against my own verdict, and rebuttal: "These are three trivial number swaps — fix in five minutes and PROCEED; they don't rise to a developmental gate." Rebuttal: the fixes are small, but (a) one is the book's final sentence, (b) they live in the one domain that IS this book's craft credibility and that already produced a Draft-0 blocker, and (c) their survival proves the precision audit skipped money/dates entirely — so the real gate is running that pass, not swatting three lines. That is why this is REPAIR-FIRST, not PROCEED. It is emphatically not CRAFT-BLOCKED: no core promise fails, and no expansion is warranted.
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