Claire's POV
I woke up in the wrong room.
Not wrong — the right room. Alexandre's room. The one I had walked past every morning for four weeks with the careful neutrality of someone honouring a negotiated boundary. The one that had, as of last night, stopped being the wrong side of the hallway and become the right side of everything.
The October light was doing the thing it did at this hour — thin and golden, coming through curtains that were different from mine, in a room that smelled different from mine, beside a man who was asleep on his back with the specific stillness of someone who slept the way he did everything else. Efficiently. Completely. With full commitment.
I lay still for a moment.
Took inventory.
The ceiling was higher than in my room. The curtains were a darker grey.
