"Thank you," she replied briefly. Just two words, yet spoken with the deliberate distance she had put between them. Her voice sounded cold, controlled, as if whatever had happened the night before was nothing more than a fleeting mistake. Yet beneath that composure, her heart beat unevenly, as though something she was trying to bury kept clawing its way out from inside her chest.
Silence reclaimed the room. The soft clink of knife and fork against porcelain plates rang clearly, as if emphasizing the distance between them. A chair shifted quietly, fabric rustling in a gentle whisper. Even the sound of breathing felt too loud in the tension-filled air.
Daxter stared at her without blinking. It wasn't a careless gaze, nor the desire-laced look from the night before. This was the look of a man trying to piece together a puzzle in his mind. His eyes were calm, yet far too deep to be called ordinary.
