The city woke under pale gold light, clean and sharp after a night of rain.
Willow stood by her window with a cup of coffee cooling in her hand, watching the street below fill with the rhythm of ordinary lives. Delivery trucks stopped and started along the curb while pedestrians crossed with purposeful strides and office lights flickered on floor by floor. The normalcy felt almost insulting after everything that had happened.
Her thoughts were already elsewhere, reconstructing conversations and mapping intentions with quiet precision. Zane's voice still echoed through her memory with uncomfortable clarity. He had said she was with him now, and the confidence in his tone had not sounded like arrogance. It had sounded like belief, the certainty of a man who trusted the structure he had built around them.
She took a slow sip of coffee and welcomed the bitterness, letting the taste steady the restless current moving beneath her ribs.
