He never came that night.
Not a knock. Not a footstep. Nothing.
I lay in the guest room and listened to the house and somewhere around midnight I stopped listening and just stared at the ceiling and let that truth settle into me the way cold settles into a room when you stop pretending the heat is coming.
He was not coming.
Morning came gray and quiet and I made myself go downstairs because staying up there felt too much like hiding, and I was done hiding.
They were in the sitting room.
Damien on the sofa, laptop open, coffee on the table, completely at ease. Vanessa tucked against his side, her hand on his arm, saying something into his ear. He laughed. Low and easy, that private laugh he used when something was just for him. She looked up and saw me at the bottom of the stairs and
