ELIANA'S POV
The morning light hadn't fully turned into a day.
That particular grey hour between darkness and proper dawn where everything existed in half tones.
I felt the subtle shift of the metal door handle turning that my body registered before my mind had fully surfaced from the shallow half sleep I had managed in the hours since returning from Don's room.
My eyes opened immediately... not gradually, not with the slow blinking of someone waking naturally, but all at once, the way they opened when something had triggered the part of me that never fully switched off regardless of how tired the rest of me was.
Don stood in the doorway.
I looked at him.
He looked like a man who had spent the night sitting with things he hadn't been able to put down.
His eyes carried that particular redness that came not from crying...never that, not him ...but from hours of being open and awake and focused on something that wouldn't resolve itself into anything restful.
