The morning light slips through the heavy curtains like honey seeping through cracks in old wood—slow, golden, reluctant. The ordinary sounds of a world that hasn't noticed anything is wrong drift faintly through the room.
Dust motes float in the warm glow, suspended like tiny stars caught between sleep and waking.
I shift slightly, stretching, my body still heavy with the remnants of dreams I can't quite remember. My limbs feel loose, unmoored, as if I'm floating somewhere between consciousness and the deep, dark pull of sleep.
But something is wrong.
The warmth I expect—the familiar heat I've grown to need, to crave—is absent. The softness against my face isn't his chest. Not his heartbeat beneath my ear. Not the steady rise and fall of his breathing against my hair.
It's a pillow. Cold. Empty.
My eyes open slowly, reluctantly—as if my body already knows what my mind refuses to accept.
I blink, focusing.
