ARIA'S POV
She found a mug at the back of the kitchen cabinet that she didn't recognize.
It was blue. Slightly chipped on the handle. The kind of mug that ends up in a kitchen without anyone being able to explain how it got there. She stood on her toes and took it down and turned it over in her hands and then made her coffee in it because she liked it and it was there.
She took it to the window seat in the sitting room.
This was her morning now. Coffee, window seat, the grounds going from grey to gold as the sun came up properly. She'd been doing it for two weeks and it had already become the kind of routine that felt like it had always existed. Like her body had just been waiting for the space to build it.
She heard Damien's footsteps on the stairs. She knew his walk the way she knew most things about him now....without trying, just from proximity and time.
