Aislinn woke to soft gray light pressing at the edges of her eyelids, the kind of light that politely suggested she get her life together.
No warm arms around her waist. No deep voice calling her Beautiful. No cosmic soulmate energy.
Just her room. Just her bed. Just her very mortal, very un-caffeinated existence.
Her throat tightened unexpectedly, a tight ache rising before she could stop it. The echo of the dream, his warmth and that impossible intimacy, clung to her like a fading scent. A single tear slipped from the corner of her eye and trailed toward her hairline.
"Not doing this," she whispered into the quiet. "Absolutely not crying over imaginary men."
She swiped the tear away, but another prickled behind her lashes. She pressed the heel of her hand against her forehead and tried to breathe past the hollow, aching loss she did not understand.
She groaned and flopped an arm over her face. "Okay. Good morning to me. Excellent job, subconscious. Really subtle with the epic soulmate dream. Ten out of ten for overkill."
She peeked out from under her elbow. The ceiling stared back, completely uninterested in her drama.
"Rude," she muttered. "You could at least glow or something. Give me a sign that I am not losing my mind."
She sat up, hair sticking up in directions that suggested she had been in a fight with her pillow and possibly lost. A faint tingle ran through her left hand.
Her breath caught.
"Oh no," she told it softly. "We are not doing lingering dream sensations. That is how horror movies start and I do not have the budget for that."
Her left hand tingled again, faint and warm and unsettling. She curled her fingers into her palm, refusing to look.
She swung her legs out of bed and padded down the hall.
"Probably dehydrated," she said as she walked. "Or stressed. Or possessed by a mildly dramatic Victorian ghost who died of unrequited love. Something boring."
Her voice wavered on the word boring.
She flicked on the bathroom light and winced at the reflection in the mirror.
"You look like you tried to flirt with sleep and sleep rejected you," she informed herself.
Cold water helped. She cupped it in her hands and threw it onto her face, letting the droplets run down her neck and ground her. She reached for the soap. Her fingers moved on autopilot, rubbing together under the stream.
Her gaze fell to her left hand.
She stopped breathing.
For a heartbeat, her vision pricked at the edges with static. A faint ringing filled her ears, a surreal buzzing like the world itself was glitching.
The bruise was still there.
Dark. Clear. A perfect circle at the base of her ring finger.
Her heart slammed painfully hard in her chest, then skipped, then raced.
"Oh, come on," she whispered, voice cracking.
She lifted her hand closer, tears gathering again without permission. "No. No no no. You were supposed to fade. That is the rule. Mystery bruises fade overnight. They do not develop shape goals."
Her pulse thudded in her throat.
She touched it with her thumb.
Warmth bloomed under her skin. Not burning. Not painful. Just a soft, undeniable pulse that pushed back against her touch.
She snatched her hand back, her breath stuttering out in a sharp exhale.
"Absolutely not. You are a bruise. You are from, I do not know, hitting the nightstand or the door or the crushing weight of my responsibilities. You are not a ring from a man my brain invented in the middle of the night."
She stared at herself in the mirror, eyes red rimmed and wide.
"This is fine," she told the mirror shakily. "I am fine. Totally fine. Completely fine."
The mirror did not argue, which she considered judgmental.
She rinsed her hands again and dried them, deliberately not looking at the mark. Then she pointed at her own face.
"Here is the plan. We ignore it. We wake the kid. We feed the kid. We go to work. We live a normal, non mystical life. No dream husbands. No prophetic bruises. No cosmic nonsense."
She took a breath and stepped out of the bathroom.
Time to be normal.
Or at least fake it.
Behind the mirror, a tiny lens sat embedded in the backing, no larger than a shirt button.
It faced the room through a pinhead opening in the silvering, invisible from the front. The glass carried a faint distortion where the surface had been altered, the kind most people would write off as a manufacturing flaw if they noticed it at all.
On the other side of that lens, a camera recorded everything.
Aislinn's back as she left the room. Her reflection when she had first glanced up at herself. The moment she had lifted her left hand, the bruise clear in the bright bathroom light.
The recording continued for three long seconds after she disappeared into the hall.
Then it stopped.
***
The hallway felt colder than usual as she walked toward Liam's room, the cool wood floor grounding her a little even as her chest still trembled from the dream. She swiped at the corners of her eyes, catching the last traces of tears she had not realized were still falling. Every step felt like it belonged in two different lives, one she remembered and one she had never lived.
She pushed open Liam's door and peered inside.He was a little lump under his blanket, hair sticking up from the pillow like a fuzzy halo. His dark hair curled in soft, stubborn swirls, just like Matt's, and his eyes, when they opened, would hold that same storm gray color that always made her heart ache. The sight softened something inside her instantly.
"Hey, buddy," she said quietly. "Time to get up."
He rolled over, eyes half closed, and blinked up at her.
Then he smiled.
Her heart stuttered.
It was Matt's smile. Sleepy and crooked. The exact one he used to give her in the morning when they were too young and too in love to know how fragile everything really was.
The memory rose without permission.
Matt, nineteen and barefoot in their first terrible apartment kitchen, standing in front of a toaster that billowed smoke like it was auditioning for a disaster film. He was shirtless, hair sticking up, spatula in hand.
"I am making breakfast," he had announced when she stumbled in, eyes puffy from studying and no sleep.
"You are making a fire hazard," she had said, laughing.
He had grinned, cheeks red. "I wanted to surprise you. With toast that was not emotionally damaged."
She had laughed until she slid down the wall, sitting on the floor in his old T-shirt. He dropped down beside her, spatula still in hand, then kissed her.
Smoke and sugar and cheap coffee.Safety and hope.
After a long moment he had rested his forehead against hers and whispered, "Ais, I want all my mornings with you."
The ache that hit her now felt like someone had reached inside her chest and squeezed. Her eyes prickled again, the memory folding in on itself with a familiar heaviness that made it difficult to breathe.
"Mom?" Liam rubbed his eyes with a fist. "You have the sad face."
She pulled herself back to the present and smoothed his hair. "I am just thinking about your dad. He was very bad at toast."
Liam smiled sleepily. "Were you good at toast."
"I was perfect at toast. That is why the relationship worked."
He snorted a half laugh and pushed himself up, scooting into her lap without being asked. She wrapped her arms around him, breathing in the warm little boy smell of sleep and shampoo and crumbs that defied physics.
For a moment, sitting there with Liam's weight against her, she felt anchored. The house, the bills, the grief, they were all heavy, yes, but they were familiar. Manageable. Hers.
Then another sensation slipped in through the cracks.
A memory that did not belong to any morning she had ever lived.
Strong arms circling her waist from behind. A taller body pressed along her back. A chin lowering to her shoulder. The murmur of a low voice in her ear.
Beautiful.
Her skin prickled. Her heart gave a strange, double beat, the kind that made her press a hand against her sternum.
No.Absolutely not.
"We are not doing that right now," she muttered under her breath. "We are not replaying dream content. That is banned before coffee."
Liam tipped his head back. "What."
"Nothing," she said quickly. "Come on, we need breakfast."
"Toast?" he asked, brightening.
She hesitated only one second before surrendering. "Yes. Toast. The non smoking kind."
He pumped a small fist. "Victory."
They went to the kitchen and dropped bread into the toaster. She poured cereal for him to munch while he waited because he was six and impatient and capable of eating his body weight before eight in the morning.
She moved through the motions. Toast. Eggs. Lunchbox. She hunted for his water bottle, found it in the fridge, discovered it was empty, muttered something about tiny saboteurs, and filled it.
Then came the shoes.
"Where are your sneakers?" she asked.
He sat at the table and swung his feet. "On my feet."
She stared. "Those are socks, my friend."
He leaned over as if shocked. "What. Traitors."
She put her hands on her hips. "Okay. Last night they were by the door. Where did they migrate to."
He shrugged. "They went on an adventure."
"Of course they did."
The first shoe was under the couch, which made sense. The second took longer. She found three lone socks, a toy car, two crayons, and one piece of cereal that had apparently decided to live under the bookshelf permanently.
She finally spotted the missing shoe behind the laundry basket in the hallway.
She plucked it up and held it in front of her face. "You are not that small," she told it. "You cannot hide and pretend to be a dust bunny."
Liam peeked around the corner. "Did you win."
"Yes," she said. "I defeated the shoe and restored order."
"You are very brave," he said solemnly.
"I know." She handed it to him. "Put them on, dragon slayer. We are late."
The bruise pulsed once under her skin when she reached for her keys.
She ignored it.
They grabbed his backpack, argued briefly over whether he could bring three toy cars or one (compromise, two), and then stepped out the front door into the cool morning air.
Three houses down the street, a car sat parked at the curb, engine off, windows half fogged from inside.
The man in the driver's seat watched without moving.
His hands rested lightly on the steering wheel, fingers relaxed. Every so often they tightened when Aislinn came into view.
She stepped out of her front door with Liam in tow, one hand on his backpack strap, the other opening the car door.
He watched her lean in to buckle Liam. Watched the easy rhythm of her morning. Watched the small, ordinary motions that seemed to belong only to her.
His breath fogged a thin patch on the inside of the glass. He wiped a narrow line through it with one knuckle, keeping her in sight as she moved around the car and climbed into the driver's seat.
Her car backed out of the driveway. Turned the corner. Disappeared.
Only then did he lift his hands from the wheel.
He sat still for another moment, looking at the empty driveway. Nothing in his face shifted. Nothing betrayed thought or feeling.
He reached forward and tapped a small device tucked low on the dash. A silent light flicked on.
Then he settled back into the seat again.
Waiting.