I wake up before Damian does, which almost never happens.
For a moment I don’t move. I just lie there, suspended in that narrow space between sleep and awareness, letting myself register the absence of urgency. The room is quiet in that early-morning way, the kind that feels earned instead of fragile. Pale light slips through the curtains and settles across his shoulder, catching in the dark fabric of the sheet and turning it silver at the edge.
I watch his chest rise and fall. Even. Steady. Untroubled.
One hand rests on my stomach without me consciously placing it there, fingers splayed in a loose, instinctive way. The other is tucked beneath my pillow, curled like I’m still guarding something in my sleep. No alarms. No buzzing phone. No sharp awareness pressing at the edges of my mind
