Monday**
**Caden**
Aria left for her Monday meeting at one forty-five.
She spent twenty minutes getting ready in a way she'd never spent twenty minutes getting ready before — not anxiously, not the frantic energy of someone who wasn't confident, but the careful, considered preparation of someone who understood that how you walked into a room mattered and was choosing deliberately.
She wore the dress from our first date.
I noticed and said nothing because she'd told me not to say anything and I was choosing my battles.
She stood in the hallway at one thirty-eight looking at herself in the mirror by the door with an expression I hadn't seen before. Not self-doubt. Assessment. The specific look of someone checking that the outside matched what they knew was on the inside.
"You look lik
