Zane stopped noticing the hours somewhere around the third night, when he woke with his phone already in his hand and could not immediately tell whether the vibration had come from an incoming message or from the echo of one he had already answered.
At first, he had been careful about time, tracking Atlanta against Los Angeles, Willow's waking hours against Zana's rhythms, setting alarms not only for meetings but for moments when he knew Willow would likely be awake, when a text would land as presence rather than interruption, when his voice would arrive while she was still anchored in the day instead of drifting toward sleep.
That discipline held only until the work began demanding more than attention and started asking for endurance, shifting from something he could manage into something that required sustained sacrifice.
