BELLA'S POV
Not the fractional deceleration of the kitchen moment. An actual, visible stop, one hand on the upper banister, the legal pad in the other, and his eyes moving from my face downward and back with an expression that I could not have named with any precision and that lasted only a moment before the architectural reassembly happened and he was controlled again and the moment was sealed over.
Four seconds.
I counted them because counting was something to do.
"Going out?" he said.
His voice was the same. I had been bracing for some change in it, some inflection that would require me to respond to it, but it came out in the same measured, even register as always, the voice he used for household rules and breakfast conversation and whatever you were thinking about last night, sto
