“Since five-thirty.Habit.”
“You could have woken me.”
“You were sleeping on your stomach with one arm off the side of the bed and your hair across your face.You looked like a woman who had earned it.”He took a sip of his own coffee.“I wasn’t going to interrupt that.”
She drank.The house was quiet around them.
“Graham.”
“Yeah.”
“Last night, I said stay tonight.You said you already said okay.”
“I did.”
“I’m changing the terms.”
He set his mug down.Looked at her across the three feet of counter between them.
“Change them,” he said.
“Stay.Not tonight.Every night.”
His expression didn’t change.But something behind it settled — the way a structure settles when the last piece goes in and the whole thing finds its weight.
“The cottage lease runs month to month.I could be out by the weekend.”
“That fast?”
“Maren.I own a duffel bag and a laptop.Everything else in that cottage came with the rental.”
“That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“It’s not sad.It was simple.I traveled light because I didn’t plan on staying anywhere.”He picked his mug back up.“I’m planning on staying now.”
She set her coffee down and walked around the counter and stood in front of him.Put her hand on the center of his chest, the same place she’d put it last night when she’d told him his heart rate was elevated.
“Still elevated?”he asked.
“Resting rate.Sixty-two.You’re calm.”
“I am.”
“Good.I’ll clear the closet this afternoon.”
* * *
Graham’s phone rang at eight-fifteen.
He was in the shower.Maren was at the dining table with her coffee and her legal pad, adding to the documentation she’d started yesterday, when the phone on the counter buzzed.Not the burner — his personal phone.
The screen showed a name she didn’t recognize.Ethan Vale.
She didn’t answer it.She wasn’t the person who picked up someone else’s phone in their shared house yet.Give it a week.
Graham came out of the bathroom two minutes later with a towel around his waist and water still on his shoulders.She pointed at the phone.
“Someone named Ethan called.”
