Arwen's POV
Cole does not pretend.
That is the thing about him that makes everything so complicated. He could pretend. He is good enough with words and warm enough in the way he uses them that he could construct a story about just arriving, about coincidence, about not wanting to disturb me. He could make it believable. He has made other things believable.
He doesn't. He just stands at the far end of the greenhouse with his arms at his sides and says twenty minutes like someone who decided honesty was the floor he was going to stay above no matter what.
I look at him for a long moment. The flowers that opened for my grief are still open around me. The vine on the east wall has stopped growing but the new inches are visible in the dark. The herb plants closest to me are still turned in
