~ Lily ~
I wake slowly and for a few seconds I lie there, listening to the quiet hum of the room's AC, wondering why everything feels so unfamiliar. Then my memory from last night returns, and I turn my head.
Hector is standing by the window.
His back is to me, one hand wrapped around a mug of coffee, his phone resting loosely in the other. A message fills the screen, but he hasn’t moved it in several minutes. He’s staring out across the skyline instead, the early morning sun catching the side of his face. There is something almost peaceful about him, something so ordinary that it catches me off guard.
He hears me shift beneath the sheets and looks over his shoulder. “Morning,” he says, his smile arriving easily, without hesitation, without the strange uncertainty I spent years believi
