Ch. 4: Midnight Terms

Rain traced long silver lines down the window, and somewhere a clock counted the hours.

"I'm not asking you to forgive me," Sophia said. "I'm asking you to listen." The conversation turned, the way conversations do, from the easy things to the ones that mattered. For a heartbeat the careful distance between them thinned to nothing at all.

She remembered the first time, and the last, and all the ordinary days in between that had somehow mattered more. The conversation turned, the way conversations do, from the easy things to the ones that mattered. Sophia crossed the room slowly, aware of every step, of the way she was watching without seeming to.

She remembered the first time, and the last, and all the ordinary days in between that had somehow mattered more. Sophia crossed the room slowly, aware of every step, of the way she was watching without seeming to.

The conversation turned, the way conversations do, from the easy things to the ones that mattered. Money could buy a great many things, she had learned, but never the one thing that was wanted most. There was a history between them that neither would name, written in the things they did not do.

The conversation turned, the way conversations do, from the easy things to the ones that mattered. She remembered the first time, and the last, and all the ordinary days in between that had somehow mattered more.

Outside, the world went on as if nothing had shifted. Inside, everything had.