They left the penthouse together that morning with the same careful choreography they had invented in the quiet hours: clothes chosen with haste, a quick, private breakfast, promises made in fragments. The city below them was already awake, indifferent to the private weather that had settled over Ava and Ethan. The elevator fell away, carrying them through floors inhabited by people who would later have opinions, and by the time they stepped into the lobby their hands were linked as if by habit.
Ava felt the bracelet at her wrist, the small weight of it like a secret anchor. It had been Ethan’s attempt at tenderness the day he first intruded into her life with tokens and presents. Now it sat between them as a quiet reminder: something given freely had to be carried carefully.
They shared
