Chapter 4: Mornings

Ciara had developed a routine.

She rose before him — she was always the earlier riser — and showered and started the coffee and began breakfast, moving quietly through the kitchen in nothing but her skin, learning the geography of the stove and the counters with the particular care of a girl who had decided early that the worst thing that could happen in this suite was a burn on a sensitive area.

He woke to coffee already made. He accepted this without comment. That was simply how mornings worked now.

Tuesday

He was still in bed when she came back from the shower, damp and moving quietly toward the kitchen.

His voice stopped her before she reached the door.

“Come here.”

She came to his side of the bed. He reached up and pulled her down onto the mattress beside him, her back to his chest, and his hands moved over her with the same deliberate, unhurried precision he brought to everything. She lay still. Her breath changed within the first minute. Within three she was making the small, involuntary sounds she had stopped being ashamed of because shame required an audience and he was not an audience — he was the author of every sound she made.

He brought her to the edge with the patience of a man who had nowhere to be.

Then he stopped. Rolled away. Said: “Coffee.”

She lay there for a moment, the ceiling above her, her body a question with no answer. Then she got up and went to the kitchen.

She made his coffee first. That was the rule.

Thursday

That Thursday morning, Caleb was up early sitting at the breakfast bar reading the paper. He told her as she came out of the bedroom, “Put the coffee on and start breakfast.”