Ava'sPOV
She smelled the coffee before she was fully awake.
For three seconds, in that soft space between sleeping and consciousness, she forgot everything. She was just a person in a bed smelling coffee, and the morning was ordinary, and nothing had happened, and life was fine.
Then she remembered.
She sat up. Checked her phone. 6:14 a.m. Four hours of broken sleep stitched together badly. Her ribs ached the way they always did in the morning, a deep, dull reminder that took about twenty minutes to settle into something manageable.
She got up anyway.
Leo was in the kitchen.
He had his back to her when she came in. He was standing at the small counter with a mug in his hand, looking out the narrow window at the grey morning, and he was still wearing the same clothes from last night. She looked at the set of his shoulders. The slight forward lean. The way his hand held the mug was a little too tight.
He hadn't slept.
