Nathaniel’s POV
I remember the exact way the light fell across my desk that afternoon, a wide, pale band that cut through the glass and made the polished wood glow. My office is usually a place of clean lines and quiet order: floor-to-ceiling windows, a low shelf of books I rarely open, a wall planted with dark green moss that softens the city’s hard edge. There are plants everywhere, not because I like them for decoration but because I like the way living things slow a room down. It keeps me from moving too fast. Tonight, the room felt slower than it should have; my thoughts were thick, not from work but from the constant pull of Ava’s name in my head.
I had been trying to work. We have a big pitch coming up a public space, a façade that the press will eat up, an entire block we can rem
