JADEN’S POV
She was in the sitting room when I came home.
Not reading. Not watching the television. Just sitting in the armchair by the window with her legs tucked underneath her and her phone face down on the armrest. Looking at the grounds outside with the particular quality of attention that meant she was not really seeing them.
Thinking.
I had been back from the office for twenty minutes. Changed out of the jacket. Come downstairs for something I had not fully decided on yet. Water perhaps. The kitchen. Some version of stepping away from the proposal and the filings and the eleven years of momentum that had been building toward a moment I could now see clearly on the horizon.
I had not expected to find her in here.
I stopped in the doorway.
She did not hear me immediately. She w
