Kingsley awoke before dawn, long before the faint glow of morning began to seep through the slatted cabin window. His eyes opened slowly, adjusting to the soft shadows of early light. For a moment, he simply lay there in stillness, the silence of the retreat settling around him like a second blanket. But it wasn’t sleepiness that held him in bed—it was something else.
Katherine.
She’d laid her head on his shoulder.
His fingers, still resting faintly over the spot on the sheet where his hand had curled around hers last night, flexed slightly as if to remember the shape of her. The sensation had stayed with him—her warmth, trust, and silence that spoke volumes. She hadn’t flinched. She hadn’t pulled away. If anything, she’d leaned in. That single hour had stretched into something much mor
