Julian's POV
The pattern Nadia asked for looked like this.
Breakfast together when Elise allowed it. Coffee made the way she liked, which I'd finally memorized correctly after six years of getting it wrong. Work during the day, separate but in the same space, often enough that it stopped feeling deliberate. Dinner most evenings. Elise's bath, her bedtime routine, the particular negotiation of who sang to her when she wouldn't settle, which was always Nadia, but I was allowed to try first.
It wasn't romantic. It was something more foundational than that.
Three weeks into it, I realized I hadn't checked my work email after seven PM in eighteen days. I noted this the way you note something you didn't know you were capable of.
The new job was straightforward in the way I hadn't expected w
