~Caden's POV~
He is aware of the distance from the moment Miriam closes the front door behind her.
It arrives immediately, a kind of awareness that settles into his chest before he has even consciously registered that he and Selene are alone in the apartment for the first time without the buffer of her mother's quiet presence somewhere nearby in another room. He notices the silence shift, the particular weight of a space that suddenly contains only the two of them and whatever has been building, slowly and without acknowledgment, across these past weeks of careful, measured visits.
She suggests coffee. He says yes, though they have both already had coffee that afternoon, the cups still sitting rinsed in the rack from an hour earlier, a fact neither of them mentions out loud. He understa
