Ivy woke up smiling before she even remembered why, the memory of the parking lot arriving a half-second later like sunlight through a window she'd forgotten she'd left open — Lex's hand against her cheek, the careful question in the way he'd kissed her, the answer she'd given without a single second of hesitation.
She let herself have exactly four minutes of it before her brain, reliably, dragged her back to everything else sitting underneath the warmth — the notebook in her bag, Marchenko's name written in Coach Orlova's careful hand, her mother's fifteen years of silence finally cracked open, and the low, persistent hum of worry about what Nikolai Volkov might do once he noticed the ground shifting under him.
She texted Lex on the bus. Good morning. Still thinking about last night.
T
