The elevator doors slid open onto the top floor, the corridor stretching out in clean lines and muted light. Brock stepped out first and Harper followed half a pace back, shoulders tacky with drying sweat where Nolan's last throw had slammed her into the mat. The split in her lower lip tugged when she moved her mouth; she scrubbed her thumb along the corner, flaking a crust of dried blood loose and rolling it against her fingertip.
She knew this hallway now—the soft carpet, the numbered doors, the way Brock's unit sat near the end, between the stairwell and the turn. What set her on edge wasn't where they were, but the route that had brought them here. Training days usually carried them straight from mats to cafeteria, into steam-table heat and clatter and Nolan's running commentary over whatever Brock put on his tray, before they rode the car back up and he locked her in the spare room. Today he'd tapped the call button as soon as they cleared the training floor, her stomach still mostly empty, and taken her up without a stop.
She ran through the sparring in her head as they walked. Gunner on his back with her knee driven into his side. Nolan's hand closing on hers when he hauled her upright. Brock's eyes on all of it. Maybe he'd decided she'd pushed too far with Gunner, or that she'd leaned on rage longer than he wanted. Skipping lunch and shutting her away for the rest of the day would fit his way of tightening the leash without saying a word.
Near the end of the hall, he slid his keycard through the panel. The lock clicked, and the door swung wide. She stepped in behind him, instinct already pulling her toward the short corridor that led to her room. Her feet knew the route even before she thought about it: past the couch, past the table, lock, door, quiet.
Brock's hand lifted, palm open in the air between them, stopping her before she could angle that way. "Kitchen," he said, tilting his head toward the island instead of the hall.
The word caught her. She stayed where she was for a breath, weight half-set toward the familiar path. Every other day, this space had been something she crossed, not someplace she stayed—a strip of floor between elevator and spare room. Training ended downstairs, food happened in the cafeteria under a hundred watching eyes, then he brought her up and turned the key behind her. This detour felt like he'd taken a hand on the back of her neck and turned it a fraction off the track she knew.
"What for?" slipped out before she could stop it.
His gaze shifted to her, steady, unreadable. "You've earned a meal that isn't out of a tray line. Sit."
Something in her flinched at that, some small piece already braced for a catch. Going hungry would have made sense if he was angry about the mat. Letting her into the kitchen instead asked for trust she wasn't sure she had to give. Still, he was standing between her and the hall, and the ache in her stomach had gone from hollow to twisting.
Careful now, she turned away from the corridor and crossed toward the island. The familiar shapes—the counter running along the wall, the stools tucked under the overhang, the open mouth of the living area off to her right—carried a different weight with her moving toward them instead of past. Brock motioned to a stool, fingers curling once in quiet instruction. She lowered herself onto it, ribs protesting as she settled, gaze drifting over the smooth stretch of stone, the sink, the row of cupboards above, searching for whatever price was going to show itself, before she fixed her eyes on a faint pale vein in the countertop and held there.
Brock moved past the island without another glance at her, footsteps crossing the line where the kitchen ended and the living room began. From where she sat, she could see the edge of the couch and the corner of the low table, the rest of the space dropping out of view. She kept her attention on that thin, lighter streak in the stone, tracing its curve as if someone had told her this was the one spot she was allowed to look at. The rest of the apartment belonged to him—couch, shelves, whatever he kept on them. She'd walked through here enough times to know the shape of it, but sitting still inside it made every unseen angle feel like something she shouldn't turn her head toward.
A drawer slid open somewhere beyond the doorway into the living room. Wood rasped. Paper shifted with a dry whisper. She listened to the way his weight moved across that space, measured and efficient, the soft thud of something set aside, the muted click of metal against wood. Her body stayed locked in place, hands flat on her thighs, attention pinned forward while sound filled in details she refused to picture.
He stayed out there longer than she expected. Long enough for unease to seep into the quiet between those small noises, for her to wonder if he was letting her sit at his counter just to remind her this was still his territory from threshold to far wall. Long enough for her thoughts to try and shape those sounds into objects—files, weapon, something he didn't want near her—and then shove that guesswork back down again.
When he stepped back into the kitchen, he came into view around the far edge of the island. His sleeves sat rolled to his forearms, veins standing out under skin that still carried faint traces of chalk from the mats. His face gave nothing away. Footsteps steady, shoulders in that settled line she'd learned to read as neutral.
He stopped opposite her and laid a rolled length of paper on the counter. It landed with a soft, solid sound that tugged her focus down. He didn't slide it closer or tap it; just set it there between them, an object placed inside her reach. By the time she tore her eyes away and looked up again, he'd already turned slightly, angling toward the run of cabinets and the fridge along the wall.
The fridge door opened with a low rubbery pull, a wash of cooler air spilling across the tiles. Light from inside picked out the planes of his shoulders. Bottle glass touched down on the counter near the sink to her left. Hinges on an overhead cupboard let out a tired complaint. A plate came down, followed by the small, quiet clatter of cutlery. The domestic sounds of him moving around his own kitchen threaded through the room while the roll of paper sat in her space, close enough to reach with one hand.
She didn't touch it yet.
Her fingers curled against her thighs, nails dimpling fabric. Whatever he kept rolled that tight was never going to be harmless. He could've left it in that drawer or handed it straight to Vex or Nolan. Bringing it out here, setting it in front of her without a word, meant something she couldn't see the edges of. Information. Test. Leash. All of it coiled inside that tube.
The end of the roll had loosened where his hand had left it. A narrow strip of paper had uncoiled itself across the stone, pale surface catching the overhead light. Faint lines showed along the margin, just enough to hint at boxes and angles. Her pulse picked up in her throat.
Her hand lifted before she'd fully decided to move it. Hovered there, casting a shadow over the paper, waiting to hear him snap at her to leave it alone or say it wasn't for her. The only sound was the soft clink of glass as he set something down near the sink and the low rush of the fridge door sealing.
She set her fingertips to the edge and drew it open.
The roll surrendered its shape with a crackle, sliding out beneath her hand until the full sheet lay stretched between them on the island. Ink traced corridors and stairwells, rooms marked out in clean, deliberate strokes. A floor plan, industrial and spread wide, nothing like the compound. The footprint ran longer, with rectangular bays and tighter interior routes. Two loading docks sat along one edge, truck access sketched in with blocky outlines that could only be rigs or stacked containers.
Black pen cut over the printed lines in harsher angles. Handwritten notes crowded the margins and corners. Arrows ran along possible routes, block letters tight near intersections and doors. Her eyes caught on a mark near the center, just off a stairwell landing—a small circle drawn around the junction where three corridors met.
The scrape of ceramic on stone jolted her. Her hand snapped out on reflex, palm flattening over the corner of the plan as if he'd come to snatch it away. The paper stayed under her fingers. A plate slid into her space instead, coming to rest by her elbow with a small, controlled push.
She blinked down at it. Two thick halves of a sandwich sat on the white ceramic, bread uneven where he'd cut it, meat and cheese layered in a way the cafeteria never bothered with. No garnish, no steam, nothing dressed up. Just stacked protein, assembled in his kitchen and set within reach like it was the most ordinary thing in the world.
Her eyes lifted. He was still on the far side of the counter, watching her. Whatever passed between them in that glance landed and held for a breath before she looked back at the food, then at the sweep of lines under her hand, unsure which one he expected her to deal with first.
A moment later, the legs of a stool scraped lightly against the floor. He came around the end of the island and pulled it out beside hers, close enough that she felt the shift in the floor under his weight when he sat. His elbows settled on the counter, forearms braced on the stone. The posture didn't read as casual. It felt set, like everything else about him—measured pressure, steady presence at her side while the sandwich and the blueprint waited between them.
He didn't reach for the food. His attention stayed on the paper between them. He shifted closer, forearm braced on the island, the other hand coming in slow until his fingertip settled on the sketched loading bay. The pressure left a small crescent along the edge of the line.
"Convoy rolls in here," he told her. "Three trucks. Offload runs ten minutes if they're efficient. Outer patrol thins out during shift change—six-man sweep along the southwest perimeter. Inside, two on the door, one parked at the stairwell, one glued to the monitors. Boss sits here."
His hand drifted up a level, tapping a boxed room on the second floor. The square sat blank on the legend, walls drawn solid, a little block of ink that read as the kind of office where decisions got made and bodies got ordered around.
He waited until her eyes followed his finger.
"Three minutes in. Three out," he went on. "Alarms stay quiet. Nobody walks out on their own feet. Where do you hit it?"
Her throat felt dry. She dragged the plate closer until the edge pinned a corner of the plan. The sandwich felt heavier than it looked when she picked it up. First bite went down without taste, chewed and sent on its way while her free hand slid along the perimeter he'd marked.
Something coiled low in her gut. He didn't lay drills out like this. Most of the time they came on the floor, wrapped in contact and command—his voice at her ear, a hand on her shoulder shoving her into the right stance, the smack of a trainer catching her ribs when she missed a cue. Sitting at his kitchen counter with an unfamiliar layout under her hands and a question that already sounded weighted, like he'd run it a dozen times in his head before bringing it to her, sat too close to a real job to feel like another exercise.
He'd told her from the start: everything was training. Every minute he kept her breathing meant work. That mantra uncurled in her head and pressed down on the unease, smoothing it just enough for her to move.
She swallowed hard, set the sandwich down, and leaned in until the ink filled her view.
"Here," she said after a moment, thumb landing on a narrow corridor running along the loading zone. "Shift change puts anyone out here half-asleep. They're thinking about coffee and getting off the clock. You come in on this side while they're in that fog."
Her gaze stayed on the ink. "Catch the sweep at the corner. Hit hard enough that nobody gets a word off. Don't stop to check bodies. Just keep moving. Stair guard goes next. You take him fast, push through storage, cut into the control room before they finish wondering why the cameras fuzzed."
She tapped the little square that marked the office he'd pointed at, then the route that curved toward it. "Boss is boxed up here. You clear the monitors, clear whoever's posted outside this door, put him down, grab whatever he's sitting on and get out the back while they're still trying to figure out where to send bodies."
She felt the tension pull across her shoulders as she spoke, muscles remembering hallway sprints, narrow spaces, doors that never stayed closed long. "Quick in, quick out. Don't give them time to pull a real response together."
Silence stretched. The room seemed to lean into it.
His gaze stayed on the layout. "You're still thinking like a Viper," he said at last, voice calm. "Rush the gap, trust that the window stays open, run before the heavier guns get turned your direction."
The words landed like something old and familiar dropped on the table between them. That had been their way—work lean, work fast, assume nobody was coming to drag you out if it went wrong.
His hand slid across the plan, his finger laying a new line through the route she'd traced. "The Syndicate doesn't call that enough," he told her. "Our crews don't throw themselves at the side door and hope everyone upstairs is still rubbing sleep out of their eyes."
He nudged his knuckle against one of the loading docks, then the stairwell, then the little office square. "We put bodies at every exit we don't like. We stack firepower where we want the fight to happen, and we keep it there until it's done. We don't bank the whole run on one clean minute and the wish that nobody trips over a corpse."
Her tongue pressed against the back of her teeth, answers rising—about how many times wishing was all the Vipers had, about what it felt like when the bigger crews finally swung their weight around. She kept them down, eyes fixed on the black lines instead of his face.
"And what would you do with this?" she asked, low. "If it was yours?"
His focus lifted from the page to her, steady. "I'd close off the routes I don't want them taking," he said. "Lock them into the center of the building where we can see them. Bring the trucks home full, and have every name I came in with still on my roster when we roll away."
Doctrine sat in the way he said it, settled into the grain of his voice.
Her fingertips brushed the curling edge of the sheet. She didn't argue. Not yet. She let his version of the hit sit beside hers and tried to feel where the ground shifted under both.
Beside her, he finally reached for his own half. The counter carried the small sound of crust breaking, the faint click of his jaw as he worked through it, gaze still resting on the plan sprawled between their wrists.
After a moment, she reached for her sandwich again and took another bite, the motion automatic. She chewed, swallowed, then set the food back on the plate and let her hand drop to the edge of the blueprint. The paper felt cool under her palm, steady, as if the lines already existed in the world and they were just catching up.
"Could you…" The first part came out rough. She drew in a breath, kept her eyes on the ink instead of his face. "Show me how you'd box it. Start to finish."
Silence held for a few seconds. She felt it more than heard it, a pause that weighed the ask. When she finally risked a glance up, something in his expression had shifted. The tension that usually sat tight along his jaw eased a fraction, his gaze settling on her with a focus that felt less like assessment and more like someone finding a tool where he'd left it.
He hooked the edge of the sheet with two fingers and drew the blueprint toward the middle of the island, closing the gap between them until their shoulders shared the same pool of light. The motion carried a certain ease, a man sliding into work that fit his hands.
"All right," he said. "Watch."
A pen appeared from his grip, black ink poised above the blue lines. As he started to redraw the route, laying in fresh strokes with the weight of Syndicate doctrine in every mark, Harper listened to the scratch of the tip on paper and tried to pull her thoughts in behind his, step by step, inside a world she'd spent her life fighting.
** ** **
Night had settled over the compound, the thin hum of the ventilation the only sound in her room. Harper sat on the bed with her back against the wall, one arm tucked beneath her head, eyes fixed on the ceiling. A dim strip of light glowed under the door, pale against the floor.
After lunch, Brock sent her to shower. The hot water took the edge off the worst of the stiffness, loosened the tight pull in her shoulders, but it couldn't reach the deeper ache in her legs or the bruised throb in her ribs. She pulled on loose sweats and a baggy shirt, fabric soft against skin still tender in places, before he walked her back. The door shut behind her. The lock turned from the outside with that same clean click, the sound tucking itself under her ribs as a familiar reminder that this space belonged to him before it ever would to her.
He'd left her with nothing else. No comment on what she'd said over the blueprint, no hint of whether she'd passed or missed whatever line he'd drawn in his head. Just silence in his wake.
Hours slid by in stretches that were hard to measure. The room narrowed down to the slow turn of air from the vent and the way her own breathing filled the space. Sometimes she paced until her ribs complained, sometimes she sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the window until her eyes burned. Today she'd run the lines of the floor plan in her head instead, tracing corridors and stairwells on the ceiling until they blurred.
The knock, when it came, cut through the hum like a small jolt. Brock stepped through, crossed to the desk, and set a paper bag down on the scarred surface. Cardboard rustled, faint grease bleeding into the brown. The top of a white carton peeked out, red print already going translucent from the oil.
Chinese takeout.
He hadn't looked at her long enough for her to read anything in his face. No question, no order, just the weight of the bag left behind as he stepped back out. The door closed. The lock turned again.
For a while after that, the only sound was the vent. Then a low murmur bled in from beyond the wall—two voices, blurred by concrete and distance. She'd pushed herself up on one elbow and listened. The cadence had sorted itself out if she held still. Brock's register, lower and steady, and Nolan's, looser, words spilling in uneven bursts. Glass clinked against glass. A chair leg dragged. The noise had come thin through the walls but carried enough shape to sketch a scene she couldn't see.
A snort had edged into a laugh. Nolan's first, quick and rough, then Brock's joining it, deeper, pushed out on an exhale that had rolled into something she'd never heard from him. Not with her. It hadn't been the clipped sound he gave when Nolan needled him in front of the crew or the dark humor that surfaced in the cafeteria downstairs. This had sounded easier, like the weight he always wore had shifted for a second somewhere she wasn't allowed.
Her fingers had tightened around the side seam of her sweats, knuckles whitening. She'd sat there, breathing in the faint, rich smell of the food cooling on the desk and listening to the muffled rise and fall of voices through the wall. Brock had a life on the other side of her door—conversation, laughter, whatever passed for unwinding at the end of a long day. She'd had four walls, a lock, and a paper bag she hadn't opened.
It shouldn't have surprised her. This was what the arrangement looked like from her side: he worked her until her muscles shook, fed her enough to keep her standing, then shut her away while he went back to being whoever he was when she wasn't around. He'd always been able to walk out. She'd always been the one left behind.
Another faint burst of laughter had threaded through the vent, then dropped away. Chairs had shifted. Something had bumped against a table. The sounds had thinned until the hum of the air system swallowed them.
That had been hours ago.
Now the cartons sat back on the desk, flaps folded over, edges darkened where sauce had soaked in. She'd eventually lifted the lid on one of them when the voices faded—taken a few mouthfuls straight off the top, just enough to take the edge off the hollow in her stomach—then the echo of Brock's laugh had replayed itself in her head and whatever was left of her hunger slipped away. She'd closed the boxes, stacked them again, and left them there. Soy and fried noodles clung faintly to the air, thinned by time and the distance between her and the life happening on the other side of the wall.
Harper let herself fall back onto the mattress, eyes finding the same corner of the ceiling she'd been staring at before the knock. The light under the door held steady, a narrow line cutting through the dim. She watched it until her vision blurred and the floor plan she'd memorized earlier tried to lay itself over that seam, corridors and choke points lining up with the crack of light like it was another hallway waiting to be cleared.
She traced the routes in her head the way Brock had drawn them—crew placements, cut-off points, exits sealed on purpose. In the kitchen it had been ink and doctrine, the scratch of his pen and the weight of his voice. Lying here, the shapes filled with bodies. Guards running that sweep. Someone stuck on the late shift at the monitors. A boss in a square of office who probably thought a convoy night would be like every other night until it wasn't.
Black Maw. The convoy. Whatever this building stood in for. Every stroke of his pen this afternoon had been a way to hurt someone else cleaner, faster, more completely.
The clock in her head ticked louder in the quiet. Three months, minus the time she'd already burned. Training grinding on. A path forming under her feet she hadn't chosen, built out of drills and corrections and the way he'd said our crews while he moved her pieces around his map.
She didn't want to carry the Syndicate's banner, to be folded into their machine the way he kept angling her. The thought of standing where his pen had put her—inside their colors, moving their way, putting those routes to use on people who'd never heard her name—sat wrong enough to turn her stomach. But lying here doing nothing wasn't a neutral choice either. Vex's clock didn't care about her conscience. Survival wasn't something she was ready to lay down and walk away from.
Both options pressed in like walls, each one promising a different kind of crush if she leaned too hard into it.
She sighed and rolled onto her side, facing the door. The strip of light stayed in place. Faint sounds carried from the hall—Brock moving somewhere beyond, steps even, the dull thud of something set down. A rhythm she couldn't read, life still happening out there with or without her.
Her eyes slipped closed before she could chase it further, exhaustion finally dragging her under.
The quiet of the room bled into the creak of metal. The wet stink of the yard slid in. Shadows swelled at the edges of her vision, stretching, bending—then snapping into faces. Syndicate colors. Gleaming weapons. She was on her knees again, wrists bound, gravel grinding into her shins.
Fingers twisted in her hair, yanking her head back. The sky was a black smear—empty of stars or the moon, just the flare of steel descending toward her face. It caught the light and seared her eyes white. She tried to move, but her legs were pinned—boots crushing her calves, weight bearing down until every muscle in her lower body went useless.
Laughter started low, then swelled, echoing wrong, as if it poured in from every direction at once. It crowded her ears until her own breath vanished under it. Blood flooded the back of her throat, iron-thick, clogging as it coated her tongue. A hand clamped over her mouth. Her lungs locked. No air, no sound, just pressure and the hot burn of her chest straining for something it couldn't find.
Faces shifted. Syndicate. Then Vipers. Then strangers with breath that scraped her skin. Dante's eyes burned in the crush—wide, stricken, accusing—and then they were gone, swallowed by shadow.
Brock stood above her. Towering. Watching. His boots planted beside her knees, his face carved out of something that wouldn't move. The knife in his grip came down—
Harper jolted upright with a scream, raw and torn out of her. Her chest heaved, lungs clawing for air that wouldn't come fast enough. The sheets twisted around her legs might as well have been restraints; she ripped them down with frantic hands, breath breaking into splintered bursts.
The door slammed against the stop. Light from the hall cut a hard bar across the floor as Brock came in fast, barefoot, sweatpants hanging low on his hips. His stride ate the space in three steps, heavy but controlled, eyes sweeping the room in one quick pass like he expected another body to be in there with her.
Her scream still rang in her throat. The moment she saw him, her hand flew to her mouth, fingers pressing against her lips as if she could shove the sound back in. He'd warned her about this. Waking half the floor. Sedation if she couldn't get it under control. Her gut clenched, a different panic shouldering in beside the leftover terror from the dream.
His shoulders were rigid, jaw set tight, but for a breath something flickered across his face. It wasn't anger, not the hard edge she'd braced for. Closer to worry, quick and sharp around the eyes before he pushed it down.
"Harper." His voice cut through the static in her ears, low and steady.
She stared at him, eyes wide and unfocused. The man from her nightmare—standing over her with a knife, everything lit in steel and blood—had been replaced by this one in the doorway of her room, pulse still pounding in the line of his throat. Her brain tried to weld the two together and failed. His name stuck under her tongue like it had nowhere safe to go.
He crossed the last step and reached out. His hand landed on her shoulder and she jerked, whole body jolting, fists wrenching at the twisted sheet as she pushed herself back against the headboard, waiting for him to pin her down, waiting for the bite of a needle.
Brock didn't yank away or tighten his grip. He lowered himself instead, dropping into a crouch beside the bed until his gaze met hers at level. His hand stayed where it was, weight firm enough to be there, light enough that she could shake it off if she really tried.
"You're in your room," he said. The words came even, anchored, each one placed like he was laying stones. "Middle of the night. Just a dream."
Her chest still heaved in uneven pulls. She tried to nod, but her head only twitched. She couldn't quite unclench her jaw enough to answer. His eyes held hers, unblinking. No heat, no disgust, no hint he was about to call for a syringe. Just that fixed attention, bracing her in place until the air started to move easier.
"It's over," he added, tone dropping a notch. "You're here. Nobody touched you."
The words slid in slow, catching on all the places inside her that hadn't caught up yet. Her throat tightened. Wet burned at the corners of her eyes before she could stop it. Her spine eased away from the headboard by degrees, the fight draining out of her shoulders, leaving a thin tremor behind.
"I'm—" The apology tried to force its way out, habit and fear tying around it. It frayed into something smaller instead. "Okay," she managed, the word cracked, barely a whisper.
Brock released her shoulder and eased back a step, giving her space without leaving the radius of the bed.
"Lie down," he said. "Try to go back to sleep."
He didn't head for the door. Instead, his foot hooked the desk chair, dragging it around in one easy pull. He sat with the backrest under his chest, one arm slung along the top rail like he'd done this a hundred times in other rooms, other lives. His hand went into the paper bag on her desk, pulling out a carton and a pair of chopsticks. Cardboard rustled, paper folded. He picked through the leftovers with the same steady, methodical rhythm he fought with, digging up a strip of meat or a clump of noodles and lifting it to his mouth without hurry.
She didn't move at first. Just watched him.
Watched him sit in the half-dark, bare foot, eating food meant for her without a word of apology, the moonlight from the narrow window slicing his face in two—one side cut deep in shadow, the other washed pale. None of it made sense. Not the staying. Not the way he kept his body between her and the door. Not the small, quick glances that skimmed over her when he thought she wasn't looking, checking breath, posture, distance.
Her muscles ached with the effort of staying upright. She let her spine sink back against the mattress, then edged herself down until her head found the pillow. She curled toward the wall on instinct, but left herself angled just enough that she could keep him in the corner of her vision if she wanted to.
Her ribs ached. Her legs ached. Her head buzzed with the hollow thump in her chest, still too fast, slowly dragging itself toward something steadier. The digital clock on the desk glowed a mean, red smear—barely an hour past midnight. Too early to call this over. Too late to pretend she wasn't wrecked.
She kept her eyes open for a while, counting the small sounds. The faint scrape of chopsticks. The soft clack of them against cardboard. The quiet swallow when he finished a mouthful. The slow pull of air in his lungs. None of it matched the chaos in her chest, and that mismatch held her awake longer than the nightmare itself.
Eventually the edges of him started to blur. The chair, the line of his shoulders, the box in his hands—they all softened around the edges as fatigue worked its way past the fear. Her eyelids dipped, jerked back up, dipped again. Every time she surfaced, he was still there in the same spot, eyes on the room and the door as much as on the carton.
She let her eyes close at last. The scent of soy and ginger, the muted rustle of paper, the measured rise and fall of his breathing tugged at her, thread by thread, until the nightmare slid further back, then the room, then even the awareness of him in the chair, fading into dark.
When she woke, warmth lay across her back, sunlight seeping through the thin fabric of her shirt. She stayed still, breathing slow, the quiet around her carrying a different weight than it had in the dark. No rasp tearing at her throat. No knot of panic lodged behind her ribs. Just a stretch of sleep she couldn't remember falling into or clawing her way out of.
Her eyes opened by degrees. The room came into focus in soft bands of morning light, pale glow washing over the desk, catching the edge of the chair pulled up beside it. For a second, the shapes wavered, blurred at the edges, like she was still half under.
Then they settled, and she saw him.
Brock sat in the chair, feet propped on the desk, head tipped back against the wall. Bare ankles, sweatpants, the same shirt from the night before. One arm hung loose at his side, fingers relaxed, the other resting across his stomach as if he'd dropped it there when sleep finally dragged him under. The empty cartons were shoved into a corner of the desk, crumpled and forgotten.
A faint shadow darkened his jaw where stubble had pushed through. The angle of his neck looked uncomfortable enough that it made something in her own spine twinge in sympathy. At some point after she'd gone under, sleep had caught up with him right there in the chair.
He hadn't moved.
He hadn't left.
He'd stayed.
All night.