Chloe's POV:
{Setting: Acoustics Hall / Suite 204 / Haliburton Campus Grounds}
For a few long seconds, I stood motionless on the stage platform, the smooth mahogany lectern cool beneath my palms. It was the kind of cool that sinks into the skin and stays there, grounding you when everything else feels unsteady. The subtle scent of my husband’s cologne—expensive, crisp, with notes of cedar and something citrusy and distinctly displaced in an academic hall—still lingered faintly in the air. It mixed, oddly, with the residual heat of the afternoon sun filtering through the high clerestory windows, and with the faint, institutional smell of chalk dust and old varnish that never quite left Acoustics Hall.
Unpredictable, I thought, letting out a long, quiet breath that shook slightly against
