But now I knew she wasn’t disconnected.
She was just pausing.
Like I was.
I leaned back slightly.
But didn’t lie down.
Neither did she.
And that became the new pattern.
Not distance.
Not silence.
Just shared awareness that neither of us broke first.
And I didn’t know when that started.
Only that it had.
Twenty Seven
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
MASON
I didn’t mean to get up.
That was the honest version of it.
One second I was sitting there, listening to the quiet, and the next I was standing without really deciding to.
The room didn’t change.
But I did.
Rowan noticed immediately.
Of course she did.
Her head lifted slightly from where she was sitting on her bed.
Not alarmed.
Just aware.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
I paused near the desk.
“I’m not.”
That earned a look.
Not confusion.
