The days had slipped into a quiet rhythm—soft and strange and new. It felt almost like living inside a dream they didn’t want to wake from.
Sebastian had all but moved into her presence. He didn’t say it, didn’t make it official, but he was there when she woke and there when she fell asleep. Folding laundry with her. Refilling her water glass without asking. Making tea the way she liked it—never too hot, never too sweet. He was still careful around her, as if she were made of blown glass. But there was no mistaking the intensity in his eyes when she passed too close.
Still, he hadn’t touched her.
Not really. Not since before the test. Before the scan. Before everything had changed.
And Isabelle felt the absence like a phantom limb.
It wasn’t just physical.
It was a gap. A silence. A
