Jack’s POV
The days passed with a quiet rhythm that wasn’t mine, but hers.
Before Jennifer, silence had been my only companion. The crackle of firewood, the scrape of a chair leg against the old wooden floors, the measured cadence of my own breathing—that had been my world. Predictable. Solitary. Safe.
But with her, silence carried something else. It wasn’t empty anymore. It was alive.
She didn’t fill it with endless chatter, not like I might’ve expected from someone so young and out of place. No, she had a way of moving through the cottage that drew the eye without trying, that settled into the cracks of my routines without shattering them. She had her own rhythm, and damn me if I didn’t start noticing it.
The way she would curl her legs beneath her at the hearth, notebook open, hair
