The house woke the way it always did for us now—softly, as if not to startle whatever fragile peace we had managed to stitch together. Light unrolled across the study floorboards and caught the dust in long, lazy bars. I lay there a moment, buried under linen and the warm weight of two people, and let the small, ordinary miracle of their breathing calibrate me. In the years before Conley, before Angel, I thought peace was a place. Now I knew it was a pattern: a set of choices repeated until the edges softened.
Conley moved first, fingers finding mine with a practised ease. His thumb circled the skin at the base of my hand without looking, a private semaphore that said, I’m here. I blinked awake at the sound of Angel’s small, contented hum and watched dawn outline the curve of Conley’s jaw
