DAMIEN'S POV
Thursday I woke to the smell of something already on the stove.
Six forty-five. Elara was not beside me.
I lay there for a moment. The smell was onions and thyme, low and patient, the beginning of the slow cooking she'd described at the market. She'd been up before me, had started before I was awake, and the apartment already carried the particular warmth of something being tended.
I got up and went to the kitchen doorway.
She was in her robe, hair still down, standing at the stove moving things in the pan without urgency. Not performing cooking. Just doing it, at six forty-five in the morning because she'd woken and wanted to start.
She hadn't heard me.
I stood in the doorway and watched.
There was a version of this I had missed the first time. Not this exactly, not t
