He watched her cross the room, the way she moved now—unhurried, unperformed. The soft sweep of gold fabric against the floor, her hair falling loose down her back, the faint shimmer that still clung to her skin like the last trace of a stage she’d finally stepped off.

For a moment he didn’t do anything, just let the sight of her sink in. It was the kind of moment he never took for granted: her guard lowered, her breathing slow, the world finally too far away to matter.

The kettle clicked off. Steam curled in the air between them.

Avan poured the tea with the same precision he brought to everything—measured, steady, not for ritual but for care. He handed her a cup when he came over, careful not to touch her fingers even as the heat from the porcelain bled into his skin.

“I think about it all the time,” he said after a beat, voice low, carrying that trace of Birmingham in it that softened when he wasn’t guarding it. “What I’d be if I hadn’t ended up in this world.”

He sank into the other end of the couch, not crowding her, just close enough that their reflections overlapped in the glass. “My dad used to build guitars. He said music was just another way of keeping your hands busy when your head was too full. I used to think I’d do that—fix things. Make something that lasted.”

He glanced down at his hands, the silver ring glinting as he turned it once around his finger. “Guess I still do. Only difference is now I make noise instead of wood.” A quiet half-smile tugged at his mouth. “Doesn’t feel all that different, though. It’s still about control. Still about keeping the chaos from spilling out.”

He took a slow sip of tea, eyes returning to her. “You know, I don’t think the music found me. I think I went looking for it—because I didn’t know how else to be understood.” His tone softened. “And I think that’s what you did too. You built a language out of sound before anyone taught you how to name yourself.”

Her question about who she’d be without all of it hung between them. He set his cup down, the porcelain giving a soft click against the table.

“You’d still be you,” he said quietly. “You’d still walk into a room and make it pay attention. You just wouldn’t have to sing it into proof.”

He leaned back, the faint city glow tracing the sharp line of his jaw. “The noise doesn’t make you, Imogen. It just amplifies what’s already there. You’ve been real long before the cameras learned how to catch it.”

His gaze drifted to the window, to the skyline pulsing in rhythm below them. “Sometimes I wonder if we’d have found each other anyway,” he murmured. “If it hadn’t been through the music. Maybe it would’ve been some other way—some other lifetime. A bookshop. A train platform. Still the same look. Still this.”

He turned to her then, eyes steady, voice gentler. “Maybe you wouldn’t recognise that other version of yourself,” he said. “But I would. I’d know you anywhere.”

He let that hang there—no grandness, no rush to fill the silence. Just the hum of the city, the warmth of the tea, the quiet truth sitting between them.

After a long moment, he added softly, almost like an afterthought, “And for what it’s worth, I like this version of you. The one that stopped pretending she doesn’t need a bit of quiet.”

She smiled before she even meant to. It was small—barely there—but real in a way most of hers hadn’t been all night.

Steam drifted from her cup, curling between them, and for a second she just watched it move—how it rose and disappeared without ceremony, without apology. She wondered if she could ever learn to do that: to rise, to fade, to exist without needing to perform the process.

His words settled around her like warmth—unforced, honest, heavier than they sounded. And when she looked at him, really looked, she thought maybe she finally understood what people meant when they said someone could feel like gravity.

Avan didn’t just pull her in; he steadied her.

She studied him quietly, the slope of his nose, the line of his jaw, the silver glint of his ring catching light from the city. Handsome, but quieter than most men who knew they were. Rougher around the edges. Softer where it mattered. A man carved from restraint and rhythm, built from all the sounds he never said aloud.

And she thought—God, if I hadn’t found this life, I hope I still would’ve found him somehow.

Her gaze drifted to the window, to the ocean of lights below.
“Sometimes I imagine it,” she murmured, half to herself. “A different life. Different versions of us.”

The corners of her mouth curved faintly as her voice softened, dreamier now.
“Maybe I’d be the girl who stayed in Arizona, working shifts at some café where they play nothing but old Fleetwood Mac. Maybe you’d walk in one day, all quiet confidence and headphones around your neck, ordering something complicated just to sound clever.”

She let herself laugh—quiet, genuine, like the sound surprised her.
“Or maybe I’d be a teacher somewhere, living in a small town that smells like rain and cedar. You’d stop for directions, tell me you’re passing through, and I’d spend the rest of the day wondering what it would’ve been like if you’d stayed.”

Her eyes traced the skyline, each flicker of light another possibility.
“Or maybe you’d be the one singing,” she added softly, glancing back at him. “And I’d be the stranger in the crowd who knows the words but doesn’t know why.”

It wasn’t sadness that colored her voice, just wonder. The kind of ache that comes from imagining peace and realizing you might already be holding it.

She set her tea down on the low table, the porcelain giving a muted clink, then leaned sideways—slowly, without hesitation this time. Her shoulder brushed his, then her head found the space beneath his jaw as though it had always belonged there.

The scent of him—clean, faintly smoky, threaded with something like cedar and warmth—pulled her further in. His heartbeat thrummed steady under her cheek, a rhythm she could almost hum to.

For a long moment, neither of them spoke. The city moved outside, endless and alive, but in here it was just quiet. Breath and skin and the hum of lights.

“I think I like this version too,” she whispered finally, words melting into him. “The one where we still found each other.”

Her fingers curled lightly against the fabric of his shirt, grounding herself there. She didn’t need to look at him to know he was smiling—the kind that wasn’t visible so much as felt.

And for once, Imogen Porter didn’t think about cameras or consequences or what came next.
She just breathed in the stillness they’d made, the soft kind that didn’t need to be earned—only kept.

Avan’s smile came slow—unspoken, quiet, the kind that built in the eyes before it ever reached the mouth. He didn’t look away from her, not even when she tried to. The sound of her laugh still lingered in the room, and it did something to him—something small and deep, like the click of a record settling into place.

“You’d still have found a way to make everything feel like music,” he said softly. “Even if it was coffee orders and Fleetwood Mac. You’d have been the reason people came back, not the drinks.”

He reached for his mug, let the warmth soak through his palms before setting it down again. “And I wouldn’t have ordered anything clever,” he added, voice dipping into that quiet drawl that always surfaced when he was teasing without quite meaning to. “I’d have kept it simple—black coffee, too hot, just to have an excuse to stay until you spoke first.”

The image of her as a teacher made his mouth twitch with that half-smile again. “If I’d stopped you for directions, I’d never have left,” he murmured. “I’d have pretended to get lost just to keep asking the way.”

He turned slightly, studying the reflection of the two of them in the glass—her gold against his black, the faint thread of light catching the line of her hair where it brushed his chin. “And if I’d been the one on stage,” he said after a moment, “I’d have looked for you in the crowd without even knowing why. Would’ve known, though. Somehow.”

When she leaned into him, his hand found her shoulder almost automatically, thumb moving slow over the curve of fabric, more reassurance than touch. The quiet between them wasn’t fragile anymore; it was full. Alive.

“I think,” he said after a while, “every version of us was heading here anyway. Doesn’t matter the city, the noise, the names we wore. We’d have found this.” His voice softened further, the edges nearly gone. “You’d have looked up, and I’d have stopped pretending I wasn’t waiting for you.”

He shifted just enough to press his cheek against the crown of her head, his breath stirring her hair. “You’ve always been the only thing that’s made the world quiet,” he said. “Everything else just tries to sound like it.”

Her fingers tightened slightly against his shirt, and he could feel her smile against his skin. “You say you like this version,” he murmured. “So do I. It feels like the first one that’s real enough to last.”

He turned his head then, just enough to speak close to her ear, the words nearly lost to the hum of the city. “And if this is where we ended up—after everything—then maybe all those other lives were just rehearsal.”

He fell quiet again, his hand still tracing slow, steady circles against her shoulder. “Stay as long as you want,” he whispered. “The world can wait its turn.”

She wished, not for the first time, that it could’ve been one of those other lives.
The ones she’d imagined out loud, half-laughing into his shoulder a minute ago.
The ones where things weren’t this complicated.

In one of them, maybe they could’ve been together without consequences.
No contracts, no fake boyfriends, no headlines dissecting every glance.
Just two people who met at the right time and didn’t have to apologize for it.

But those weren’t the lives they were given.

She was still the pop star trying to stay one headline ahead of irrelevance, pretending to be in love with a man whose name looked good in print. He was still the producer whose reputation depended on keeping everything quiet, who carried his own ghosts in the margins of every sound he touched.

And yet—

Here, in this sliver of stillness, it all fell away.

Avan’s warmth radiated through her, the scent of him grounding her in a way nothing else could. Her fingers flexed lightly against his shirt, feeling the slow rhythm of his heartbeat under her palm. The city was a blur of motion beyond the glass, but inside, time seemed to fold in on itself.

She tilted her head just enough to look at him. The soft gold glow from the window painted him in half-light—sharp jaw, steady eyes, that quiet certainty she could never seem to match but always admired. He wasn’t trying to be anything. That was what made him so impossible to forget.

“Maybe we would’ve found each other anyway,” she said quietly. “But I wish it could’ve been easier.”

Her voice wavered, not from sadness but from the truth of it. “In some other life, maybe it wouldn’t have to be stolen hours and quiet rooms. Maybe we could’ve just… existed.”

Her thumb brushed the fabric near his collar, absent, tender. “You’d finish songs without worrying what they’d say about who inspired them. And I wouldn’t have to smile through interviews like I don’t already know the answers they’re hoping I’ll give.”

A small breath of laughter left her, soft and self-aware. “God, listen to me. I sound like I’m begging the universe for a plot twist.”

He didn’t answer right away, but she felt the way his chest rose under her hand, the quiet weight of understanding in it.

She leaned into him a little more, tucking herself against his side until the world outside blurred to nothing but color and light. The hum of the city melted into white noise, the kind of background sound that could almost pass for peace.

“It’s never simple, is it?” she whispered, more to the window than to him. “Even when it feels right. Especially when it feels right.”

She closed her eyes then, letting herself sink into the warmth and the quiet—the one place where everything felt like it could make sense, even if only for tonight.

Her next words were barely audible, carried more in the breath between them than the sound itself.
“I hate that I can’t keep this.”

Then, softer still, like a confession folded into the rhythm of his heartbeat:
“But I love that I get to have it at all.”

Her hand drifted higher, fingertips grazing the edge of his jaw before falling back to rest over his heart.

And when she finally looked up again, her smile wasn’t one the cameras had ever seen—just a small, trembling, honest thing, fragile and fierce in the same breath.

“I don’t know how long the world will let us have this,” she murmured. “But tonight, I don’t care.”

She turned back toward the window, watching the city breathe beneath them. The lights flickered like applause too far away to hear.

And for once, Imogen didn’t feel like she was performing.
She just felt alive.

Avan didn’t speak straight away. He rarely did when she said things that cut this close. He let the silence sit first—the good kind, the kind that meant he was listening. The kind she’d once told him made her nervous, back when she still thought quiet had to be filled.

He turned slightly, enough that he could see her without forcing her to meet his gaze. The light from the city brushed against her skin, caught in the gold of her gown, and for a second he almost smiled at how absurd it was that something so fleeting could look so eternal.

“You make it sound like we lost the lottery,” he said quietly, the trace of his accent curling soft around the words. “But I think we just ended up in the wrong script.” He paused, his thumb brushing over the back of her hand where it rested against him. “Doesn’t mean it’s the wrong story.”

He looked down then, to the small space where their hands met, his silver ring glinting faintly in the light. “If it were easier,” he went on, “I don’t think I’d have learnt half of what you’ve taught me. About restraint. About wanting something without owning it.”

A small exhale escaped him, more like a hum than a sigh. “I used to think control was everything. That if I could keep the world out, I’d be untouchable. But you—” he stopped himself, a faint shake of his head, eyes softening. “You made me see that quiet isn’t the same as safe. Sometimes it’s just another way of hiding.”

Her thumb had stilled near his collar, and he caught it gently, tracing the pad of his finger across her knuckles. “You’ve never sounded like you’re begging the universe,” he said. “You sound like someone daring it to keep up.”

When she said it’s never simple, he gave a small, knowing smile. “No,” he murmured. “But maybe that’s the point. The simple things fade. The complicated ones… they leave marks worth keeping.”

She said she couldn’t keep this, and his jaw tightened just a little before he spoke again. “You don’t need to keep it,” he said softly. “You just need to believe it happened. That it was real. Not every good thing needs to survive the daylight to mean something.”

Her hand brushed his jaw, light as a breath, and his eyes closed for a moment—just enough to feel it before it was gone. When he looked back at her, there was a faint, almost rueful smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “You know, I’ve spent years building rooms where the sound doesn’t echo,” he said. “But with you, it always does. Even when you leave, it lingers.”

He shifted closer then, enough for her to feel the warmth of his breath near her temple. “The world will take what it can,” he said, voice a low promise. “But it doesn’t get this. Not tonight.”

He tilted his head slightly, his tone gentler still. “Let them have the noise, Imogen. You’ve earned the quiet.”

His hand rose to the side of her face, slow, deliberate, his thumb brushing along her jaw where her pulse flickered. “You said you don’t care tonight,” he murmured. “Good. Don’t.”

Then, after a beat—barely above a whisper, like a vow meant only for her:
“Because neither do I.”

The words sank into her like warmth after too long in the cold.
For once, she didn’t chase the next thought, the next worry, the next thing she should be doing or saying.
She just let it land.

Her pulse slowed under his thumb, the steady slide of his voice still echoing somewhere in her chest. Maybe he was right—maybe not everything needed to survive the daylight to mean something. Maybe some things were made to exist only in the dark, soft, private hours that no one could take from them.

Imogen exhaled, long and quiet, and leaned a little closer. Her temple brushed his shoulder. The city outside glimmered against the glass, a thousand stories all happening at once, none of them this one.

For the first time in days, she didn’t feel like she was balancing on a wire. No managers, no schedules, no cameras waiting to catch her blink in the wrong rhythm. Just this: warmth, breath, heartbeat, quiet.

She knew it couldn’t last. That tomorrow there would be interviews, rehearsals, that she’d go home to messages she didn’t want to read and a relationship she’d have to keep pretending to believe in. But right now—right now—she didn’t care.

Her fingers caught the fabric of his shirt, tugging lightly, drawing him in until she could feel the steady rise and fall of his chest against her. “Okay,” she murmured, barely audible, her breath brushing his collarbone. “Then we don’t care. Not tonight.”

The smallest smile ghosted over her lips as she tilted her head, resting her cheek against him. He smelled like smoke and mint and something warmer underneath—like late nights and the promise of something good if she just stopped running long enough to reach for it.

She let herself sink into it, into him. The couch, the hum of the city, the sound of his breathing—it all blurred into a kind of peace she didn’t know she’d been starving for.

Her thoughts drifted, slow and dreamlike. To the show tomorrow. To the headlines that would follow. To the weight of being whoever the world wanted her to be.
Then she looked at him again, and it all went quiet.

Maybe this was the only kind of freedom people like them ever got—the kind they had to steal, tucked between the hours no one could see.
And if that was true, she’d take it. Every second.

Her hand found its way to the back of his neck, fingers sliding into his hair, gentle and sure. “We’ll let them have the noise,” she whispered. “They don’t get this.”

He didn’t answer, but he didn’t need to. His hand tightened at her waist, grounding her.

Imogen closed her eyes, feeling the quiet settle like a blanket around them. For once, she wasn’t thinking about who she needed to be, or what came next, or how impossible this all was.

For once, she was exactly where she wanted to be.

Avan felt her settle against him, that slow exhale of surrender more intimate than anything she’d said all night. Her breath warmed the hollow of his throat, and for a moment, all he could do was let the weight of it move through him—the quiet kind of ache that didn’t demand fixing, only presence.

He’d spent most of his life living between sounds, chasing perfection through control. But this—her head on his shoulder, her fingers tangled at the back of his neck—was the kind of imperfect silence that made everything else make sense.

When she said we don’t care, not tonight, he smiled against her hair, small and unseen. “Good,” he murmured, voice rough but soft. “Then it’s settled. Tonight belongs to no one but us.”

The city pulsed beyond the glass, a blur of light and movement that couldn’t touch them here. He reached up, brushing his thumb over her wrist where it rested against his chest, tracing the faint glitter caught on her skin. “You’ve still got the night on you,” he said quietly. “Even when you try to leave it behind, it follows.”

He tilted his head enough to look at her, really look—her lashes low, her mouth relaxed for once, all that polish and performance stripped back to something honest. “You know,” he added, “the world doesn’t get this version of you. It couldn’t handle it.” A pause. “I barely can.”

His hand moved to her waist again, thumb sweeping slow circles against the satin of her gown. He wanted to say more, to tell her that what they had here didn’t need a name, didn’t need to survive to be real—but he didn’t. Not yet. He just let the moment breathe.

When she whispered they don’t get this, he leaned in, his voice a low hum against her temple. “No,” he said. “They never will. This was never theirs to take.”

He could feel her heart through the fabric, steady and soft beneath his hand. “You don’t need to be anything right now, Imogen,” he said, the words almost a lullaby. “Not the headline, not the promise, not the idea. Just you.”

He rested his forehead lightly against her hair, breathing her in. The smell of jasmine and champagne had faded, replaced by something warmer—skin, salt, quiet. “You’re allowed to rest,” he whispered. “Even if it’s only for a night.”

For a while, neither of them spoke. The hum of the city filled the silence, the rhythm of her breathing syncing to his. He thought about all the places he’d been—rooms filled with music, with noise—and how none of them had ever sounded like this.

When he finally did speak again, it was barely above a whisper, meant only for her. “If all we ever get are moments like this,” he said, “I’ll still call it enough.”

Then quieter still, as her hand stayed in his hair, anchoring him to now:
“Let them have their stories, love. We’ve already written ours.”

Imogen didn’t speak right away.
She couldn’t—not yet.

His words had weight, and she wanted to feel every one of them. The timbre of his voice. The warmth in his tone. The way each syllable seemed to dissolve into the quiet around them, leaving behind something softer, something sacred.

She breathed him in, slow and steady, eyes unfocused on the glittering sprawl of the city outside. Everything he said pressed into her in layers—tender, steady, true. Each word found a home somewhere inside her chest, filling spaces she hadn’t realized were empty.

You don’t need to be anything right now.
You’re allowed to rest.
If all we ever get are moments like this, I’ll still call it enough.

She turned those words over in her mind like prayer beads. Quiet, deliberate, fragile. The sound of him felt like peace—like something she’d been chasing in every wrong place.

The weight in her chest started to shift, the tension bleeding out of her shoulders as she melted a little further into him. She could feel his heartbeat beneath her cheek, slow and certain, matching her own. The night hummed outside the window, all the noise of the world blurred into insignificance.

When she finally spoke, her voice came out low, almost dazed. “You make it sound so simple,” she murmured, half-smiling against his shirt. “Just… stop being everything for everyone else.”

Her fingers traced idle lines along the fabric near his collarbone. “Maybe I’ll learn how to do that. Starting tonight.”

For a long, gentle moment, she just let herself exist there—his hand steady at her waist, her heartbeat evening out under his. The warmth between them wasn’t loud or demanding; it was a soft, living thing that asked nothing but to be felt.

Then she tilted her head slightly, her words coming out on a breath. “I think I’m gonna take a shower,” she said quietly. “Wash the night off before it tries to follow me into tomorrow.”

Her thumb brushed the edge of his ring before she pulled her hand back, smiling faintly when she finally met his eyes. “Do you have something I can wear?” she asked, voice softer still. “Something that doesn’t smell like perfume and stage lights?”

She hesitated, her gaze flicking toward the hallway, then back to him. “You can join me, if you want.”

It wasn’t a dare, or an invitation wrapped in anything else. Just honesty. A small bridge between exhaustion and care.

“You look like you could use washing the night off too,” she added gently, almost teasing, but kind. “It’s your shower, after all.”

Her tone lingered in that delicate space between intimacy and simplicity, the kind of suggestion that didn’t need to mean more than it did. The kind that said I see you. Stay human with me for a while.

For a heartbeat, she just watched him, waiting—letting the stillness stretch, her reflection glimmering faintly in the glass behind them.

Then, quieter:
“No cameras. No noise. Just… us.”

And with that, she rose slowly from the couch, the fabric of her gown whispering against the floor as she looked toward the darkened hall—the one place left in the world where she could be small, and free, and utterly real.

Avan watched her stand, that slow unfurling of motion that always managed to undo him more than any performance ever could. There was nothing staged about her now—no angles, no poses—just the honest, unguarded weight of someone peeling the world off piece by piece.

He didn’t speak at first. He never rushed her. He just let the quiet hold, tracing the outline of her silhouette against the window’s glow. Her voice still lingered in the air—soft, a little cracked at the edges, but steady enough to make something inside him ache.

When she said he made it sound simple, his mouth curved—barely, but enough. “That’s the trick of it,” he murmured, voice low, the faint rasp of late hours lacing through his accent. “Simple isn’t easy. But it’s worth trying.”

Her fingers brushed the fabric of his shirt once more before she stood, and his hand instinctively found her wrist, not to stop her, but to hold her there a breath longer. “You already know how to stop being everything for everyone else,” he said. “You just forget sometimes. I’ll remind you when you do.”

He released her hand then, watching the faint shimmer of her gown catch the light as she moved toward the hallway. Her mention of the shower brought a softer sound from him—a quiet hum that wasn’t quite a laugh but carried warmth all the same.

“You’ll find a drawer full of my bad decisions,” he said, nodding toward the corridor. “Old tour shirts, university hoodies I never threw away. Take whatever feels least like work.”

When her eyes lifted back to his, the question in them wasn’t coy—it was human. You can join me, if you want.
He let it hang there a moment, not for hesitation but for reverence. There was a difference between wanting and taking, and with her, he’d always known to wait.

He stood slowly, his movements unhurried, deliberate. “I could use that, yeah,” he said, his tone stripped of pretense. “Not the water—just the part where nothing’s expected.”

He crossed the room to her, stopping close enough that he could see the faint reflection of the city lights in her eyes. “You know,” he said quietly, “I think this is what it means to start over—not the grand kind, just the small one. A moment at a time. A night at a time.”

His gaze softened as he brushed a stray piece of hair from her shoulder, his fingertips lingering only long enough to let her know he’d follow her lead, whatever it was. “Go on,” he murmured. “I’ll be right behind you.”

He watched her turn toward the hall again, her outline framed in the amber spill of light from the living room. “No cameras,” he repeated, more to himself than her. “No noise.”

And then, as she disappeared into the soft dark of the corridor, he added under his breath, the words almost lost to the hum of the city beyond the glass:
“Just us.”

He waited a few beats, enough to give her space, then reached up to undo the first button of his shirt—the faint sound of fabric and breath marking the end of the night’s pretense, the start of something real.

The light hadn’t broken yet.
That strange, blue-grey stillness before dawn held the city outside, and Imogen stirred in it—caught somewhere between sleep and waking.

Avan’s arm was draped over her waist, heavy and warm, his breath slow against the back of her shoulder. The sheets smelled faintly of his cologne, the ghost of last night’s shampoo, and something else entirely—something new, something theirs.

For a long moment, she didn’t move.

The quiet was too good, too rare. The condo felt sealed off from the rest of the world; even the traffic below hadn’t woken yet. All that existed was the rhythm of his breathing and the soft hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen down the hall.

Her body still remembered the night before—the press of steam between them, the laughter that had melted into something slower, the way his touch had felt less like possession and more like permission. The water had washed everything else away: the performance, the exhaustion, the noise.

Now, in the faint glow from the window, she looked down at herself—bare legs tangled in his sheets, his shirt soft against her skin, the hem brushing her thighs. It hung loose on her, smelling of detergent and warmth and him. One of his old tour shirts, maybe. A faded logo. Threadbare at the sleeves.

She smiled. It felt good to smile without meaning to.

For the first time in what felt like forever, she wasn’t thinking about cameras or call times or the headline waiting to be written the second she stepped outside. Just him. Just this.

She should’ve gotten up. There was a schedule waiting—meetings, rehearsals, emails from her manager stacked like dominoes.
But she couldn’t move. Not yet.

Five minutes, she told herself.
Just five more minutes.

Avan shifted behind her, his hand tightening unconsciously at her waist, fingers splaying against her stomach. He didn’t wake, but she could feel the way his body adjusted, like he knew she was there even in sleep.

Imogen closed her eyes again and let herself sink into him, memorizing the weight of his arm, the warmth of his chest against her back, the soft rasp of stubble when he murmured something incoherent into her hair.

She let the thought pass through her like a whisper—how much she wanted to stay. How much she couldn’t.

After a few more slow minutes, she finally exhaled and began to move. Carefully. Gently.

She slid her hand along his wrist, tracing the cool edge of his ring with her fingertip before easing his arm away from her waist. He murmured something in his sleep, the sound low and drowsy, and she froze, smiling at the ceiling.

When he didn’t stir again, she shifted just enough to slip free.

The floor was cool under her bare feet. She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear and glanced back once more.

He was still asleep, the early light pooling faintly across his shoulders, half-buried beneath the sheets. He looked impossibly peaceful, and she couldn’t help the ache that bloomed quietly behind her ribs.

You deserve a world that’s as kind as you are, she thought, knowing she’d never say it aloud.

She padded toward the kitchen, the hem of his shirt brushing the backs of her thighs, her every movement careful to keep the quiet intact.

The espresso machine gleamed on the marble counter, the city still asleep beyond the floor-to-ceiling glass. Imogen pressed the button and watched as it came to life—soft whirring, a low hiss, the scent of coffee rising to fill the silence.

For now, this was enough.
The stillness, the warmth, the quiet morning before everything else.

And as she leaned against the counter, waiting for the coffee to brew, she let herself glance toward the hallway, a fond, wistful smile touching her lips.

Five more minutes, she thought again.
Then I’ll start pretending.