Chapter Six — Morning and Its Complications
264 Words
She woke before him.
The city outside was pale grey and rain-washed and quiet in the specific way of early mornings in places that are never actually quiet. She lay still for a moment his arm still across her, his breathing still deep and even and let herself have thirty seconds of something she didn't have a word for.
Not happiness exactly. Something more like: this is real. This specific arrangement of two people in a room with the rain outside and the city below and everything complicated and nothing resolved this was the realest thing she could point to.
She got up carefully. Found his shirt on the floor. Put it on. Went to the window.
The city below. The empire his family had built reflected in the glass she could see three Hale Media billboards from where she stood, which felt like a metaphor she didn't want to examine too closely.
"You're overthinking something," he said from behind her.
She turned. He was awake, propped on one elbow, watching her with that look the one that saw things she hadn't shown.
"I'm always overthinking something," she said.
"Come back to bed."
"Damien—"
"Come back to bed, Celeste." His voice was quiet. Not demanding. Just certain. "The overthinking will still be there in an hour. I'd like an hour first."
She looked at him in the pale morning light. Rumpled, unhurried, real. Looking at her like she was something he'd decided about.
She went back to bed.
The overthinking was still there in an hour.
But she had had the hour.
- Writer
