Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-Eight — The People We Carry
They did not leave the restaurant when dinner ended.
The plates were cleared quietly, one by one, without interruption or commentary, the staff moving with the careful discretion reserved for moments that did not belong to anyone else. The candles burned lower as time passed, wax pooling at their bases, the light softening rather than dimming. It felt as though the room itself had slowed to accommodate them, as if hurrying would be a kind of intrusion.
Zane and Willow remained where they were, hands still linked across the table, neither of them in any rush to stand or reset the night into something more ordinary.
It struck Willow then how strange it was, how tender and disorienting, that they had chosen each other before they had truly known each other this way. Marriage before dating. A child before long conversations. Love forged in crisis rather than ease.
