The Chapter Full Table
Aria
James hugged Caden the same way Eleanor had.
No hesitation, no careful first-meeting choreography, just arms around him and a held breath that released into something genuine, and I watched Caden absorb it with the same slight stillness he’d had with Eleanor at the airport, the kind of stillness that meant his body was catching up to what his head had already accepted.
“You’re taller than I pictured,” James said, stepping back.
“I get that,” Caden said.
“It’s the photos,” James said. “They never give the full scale of you.” He looked at Caden properly, the assessing architect’s look, and I watched him take in things the rest of us probably missed — the proportions of him, the way he held himself, things James’s profession had trained him to notice in every
