Khai's pov
I watched her face from across the table and something in my chest settled in a way that I had stopped trying to explain to myself.
She was looking around the restaurant with the particular attention of someone who was genuinely taking something in rather than simply observing it, her eyes moving across the room with that quiet intelligence she brought to everything, and there was a brightness in her face that had not been there the first time I saw her.
I remembered that version of her clearly. She had been sitting on the bed in my pack house with her hands folded in her lap and her eyes carrying the specific weight of someone who had recently had everything they trusted dismantled in a single afternoon. There had been no warmth in her face at all, just the careful blankness
