The waiting room of Dr. Iris Chen’s practice was an exercise in soothing minimalism. Soft taupe walls, curved birch furniture, a large photograph of abstract, rolling dunes. It was designed to calm, but to Evelyn, every detail felt like a judgment on the chaotic, non-minimalist reality of her life. She sat rigidly in a chair, Liam a tense, silent presence beside her. He’d worn a clean-ish button-down shirt, but his hair was its usual defiant mess, and he tapped a restless rhythm on his knee with two fingers.
He was here. He’d shown up at her apartment at 9:15 AM, wordlessly taken her small bag from her (she’d packed a notebook, as if this were a client meeting), and driven them here. The silence in the car had been thick, charged not with their old animosity, but with a shared, profound t
