The light that came through the hotel curtains in the morning was the particular thin light of a city after rain, everything washed clean and slightly too bright, the kind of light that made rooms look more accurate than they needed to be. It was a cold, unforgiving light, the kind that stripped away the romantic haze of the night and laid bare the beautiful, chaotic wreckage of what had transpired between the sheets.
Mike was awake before it registered fully, which was the way he was always awake, moving from sleep to attention without a visible seam between them. He lay still for a moment, taking in the room as he always did when he woke up in a place he had arrived at under compressed circumstances; this meant he confirmed the exits, the sounds, and the quality of the quiet.
