Aria Pov
The fluorescent lights above the supermarket aisle suddenly felt too bright, harsh enough to make the edges of every shelf look sharper than they should.
Ethan stood frozen at the end of the next row, a plastic basket dangling loosely from his fingers as if he had forgotten it was there. Derek remained close beside him, close enough that their arms nearly touched, the same easy proximity I had seen in that bedroom. For one long second none of us moved. The ordinary sounds of the store continued around us—cart wheels rolling over linoleum, a child asking for a particular brand of cereal two aisles over, the soft repetitive beep of a scanner at a distant checkout—yet all of it felt muted, as if the three of us had been sealed inside a separate pocket of silence.
Then Layla’s voi
