The house slept in a kind of satisfied hush the morning after our coast retreat, as if the rooms themselves had inhaled the salt and kept it as a private scent. I woke first, the dim light through the curtains painting Conley’s profile in slow gold. For a moment I simply watched him breathe—each rise and fall of his chest a familiar map that steadied a still-shaky world. He looked smaller in the soft light, less the public force and more the private man who folded himself around the people he loved. My heart did the small, traitorous ballet it had learned to do whenever I thought of him: a quick, delighted skipping beat that tasted like youth and permission.
Angel stirred and smiled in her sleep, a small, honest curve that softened the line between memory and belonging. The three of us we
