I wake up expecting the resort to feel emptier without Alex.
It doesn’t.
That’s the part I’m not ready to think about yet, so I put on my swimsuit and take Mia to breakfast and don’t think about it.
Nick is already at the restaurant with Mason. They’re at a corner table by the window. Mason is eating pancakes with the precision of an engineer, cutting each one into identical squares before consuming them. Nick is reading something on his phone with one hand and holding his coffee with the other and he looks up when we walk in and his face does the thing — the small, private shift that happens before he has time to put the wall up. Something warm. Something that disappears the second he catches it.
“Morning,” he says.
“Morning.”
I sit across from him. Mia climbs over Mason
