Part Two: Adrian's Story
Adrian woke before the alarm, the way he always did—mind surfacing from sleep already assembling the day into a clean line. For a moment, he lay still and listened.
City sounds floated up from twenty-seven floors below: a bus sighing to a stop, a truck backfiring in the distance, two joggers laughing as they passed beneath the building’s awning. The penthouse’s HVAC murmured like a distant ocean. In the kitchen, the programmable kettle clicked on at six, right on time.
And in the bed beside him, Trina breathed with the unselfconscious ease of someone who trusted the dark.
He turned his head.
She slept on her stomach, one arm tucked beneath the pillow, curls spilling over her cheek in a small rebellion against the satin scarf she’d wrapped them in last night. T
