A cold, brittle ceasefire settled over our home. It wasn't peace. Peace implied a treaty, terms agreed upon, a shared vision of the future. This was a mere suspension of hostilities because both armies were decimated, too exhausted from the long campaign to lift another weapon. We existed in a state of grim, functional détente, mapping our days around each other with the precision of opposing generals sharing a ruined capital.
The threesome-our daring, desperate rescue mission-now felt like the elegant, fast-acting poison that had finished the job. I couldn't think of the hotel, of Sam's laugh or the tangled sheets, without a visceral wave of nausea. It wasn't the acts themselves that sickened me; it was the devastating cost of the aftermath.
That night was no longer a shared, secret w
