Chapter 42
899 Words
✨ The Quiet After.✨
Flora Pov
Flora woke with the feeling that something had already happened.
Not a dream—those faded quickly. This was heavier, like waking after someone had stood too close to her bed and left behind the shape of their presence.
She lay still, listening.
The house breathed around her. Pipes settling. The faraway murmur of traffic. The faint clink of a cup somewhere—Nasir, awake before her again.
Her hand was curled around the necklace.
She hadn’t remembered taking it off. She hadn’t remembered falling asleep with it in her fist. The chain had left a faint imprint in her palm, a reminder that even in rest she hadn’t fully let go.
Flora sat up slowly, her chest tight in a way that wasn’t quite fear and wasn’t quite calm either. The events of yesterday slid back into her mind like a shadow crossing a window.
The market.
The man.
Her name spoken like it had never stopped belonging to someone else.
She swung her legs off the bed and padded toward the kitchen, drawn by the smell of coffee and something warm—toast, maybe eggs. Normal things. Anchors.
Nasir stood at the counter, sleeves rolled up, hair still damp as if he’d just washed his hands. He looked solid. Unmoved. The kind of man the world bent around rather than through.
But when he turned and saw her, something shifted.
“Morning,” he said.
It was gentle. Too gentle.
Flora hesitated, then crossed the room and slipped her arms around his waist from behind, pressing her cheek to his back. She hadn’t planned it. Her body had moved before her thoughts caught up.
Nasir froze for half a heartbeat before his hand came down to cover hers.
“You okay baby?” he asked.
She nodded against him. Then shook her head. “I don’t know.”
He turned, guiding her easily until she was facing him. He lifted her onto the counter like it was nothing, standing between her knees, his hands warm and steady on her hips.
“Talk to me,” he said.
Flora looked at his collar instead of his eyes. “I didn’t tell you everything yesterday.”
“I know.”
That made her look up.
There was no accusation in his face. Just patience. And something deeper she couldn’t quite read.
“There was a man,” she said quietly. “At the market.”
Nasir’s jaw tightened—not sharply, not visibly, but she felt it like a change in air pressure.
“He knew my name,” she continued. “Things about my mother. About… before.”
Nasir didn’t interrupt. Didn’t touch her except to keep her steady.
“He said my father was worried,” she whispered. “Like I belonged somewhere I’d escaped from.”
She swallowed. “I thought I was past that.”
Nasir reached up then, brushing his thumb beneath her eye where sleep still clung. “You are.”
“But it followed me here,” she said. “Or maybe I carried it with me.”
He leaned in, resting his forehead against hers. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Her breath hitched at that. She hadn’t known she needed to hear it until the words landed.
They stayed like that for a moment, the quiet wrapping around them. When he finally stepped back, it was to slide a plate toward her.
“Eat,” he said gently. “We’ll talk more later.”
She nodded, though the knot in her stomach didn’t loosen much.
They moved through the morning together in small ways—shared glances, his hand briefly at the small of her back as she passed, the way he watched the door like it was a living thing.
Flora tried not to notice.
By midday, the house felt too large again.
She wandered room to room, touching the things that had already begun to feel like hers. A book Nasir had left open on the armchair. A sweater folded on the sofa. Proof that this place had memory now.
Still, she kept thinking of the man’s voice.
Families are complicated.
Her phone lay silent on the table. She checked it too often anyway.
When Nasir returned from a call outside, his expression was composed—but the tension in his shoulders had sharpened.
“Are you going somewhere?” she asked.
“Just for a bit,” he said. “Rafe’s meeting me.”
Her chest tightened before she could stop it. “Okay.”
He noticed. Of course he did.
Nasir crossed the room and cupped her face in both hands, grounding her. “Nothing’s changed,” he said. “I’ll be back.”
She nodded, trusting the words even as unease curled low in her belly.
She looked at his lips, wondering, and he answered without words—his mouth covering hers, drawing her in, the kiss deepening until the world faded away.
When he kissed her forehead and stepped away, the house felt different immediately—too still, like it was holding its breath.
Flora sat on the edge of the bed, necklace warm in her palm, listening to the sound of his footsteps fade.
She didn’t know what was coming.
Only that something had stirred.
And once awake, it wouldn’t go back to sleep easily.
- Writer
