Dante showed up at eleven fifty-eight.
Always punctual. Always dependable. Always exactly what a good man should be.
Sienna let him in without a word. Offered him coffee from a pot she'd made but hadn't touched. He declined. They sat on opposite ends of the couch — a careful distance that felt deliberate. Intentional. Like they both knew what was coming and were trying to maintain some semblance of dignity through it.
The apartment felt different with him in it today. Smaller, somehow. Or maybe she was just more aware of every object in it — the framed print on the wall they'd picked out together at the farmers' market last spring, the spare key on her kitchen counter that she'd been meaning to give back for two weeks, the mug on the shelf that was technically his but had lived in her cabinet for so long it had just become hers. All of it quietly cataloguing the life they'd been building. All of it about to become artifacts of something that no longer existed.
