(Joseph POV)
I learned quickly that Paris had a cruel sense of timing.
It didn't rush.
It didn't pause.
It simply continued—with or without you.
I stood across the street from the institute again, pretending to check my phone while watching the doors. Students filtered out in loose clusters, voices overlapping, laughter spilling into the open air. The sky above them was a pale, indifferent blue.
Then I saw her.
Yvette stepped out with the same quiet confidence I'd noticed before, but today there was something else—something lighter. She wasn't scanning the crowd the way she used to, shoulders subtly tense as if bracing for the next demand.
She looked… at ease.
She laughed when someone said something to her, the sound bright and unguarded. Not polite. Not careful.
Real.
My chest tightened.
She's not surviving anymore, I realized.
She's living.
