The morning light stretched across the curtains, pale and thin, but Arielle didn’t feel the warmth of it. Her chest was heavy, her body stiff as though the air itself carried weight. She lay still on the bed for a few seconds longer, staring at the ceiling. Her mind wouldn’t stop replaying what had happened yesterday—the small slip, the wrong word, the one mistake she hadn’t meant to make.
She had tried to cover it, but she wasn’t sure if she had succeeded. And when she remembered the way Kairo’s eyes had lingered on her, calm and unreadable, she felt a knot in her stomach.
Rolling out of bed, Arielle washed up and dressed carefully. Nothing too noticeable, nothing too plain either. The key was balance, she reminded herself. If she tried too hard to appear normal, he would notice. If she
