LOGIN_Author’s POV_Danica sketched in the living room while the light was still soft. Eden left early, his keys off the hook before seven, the front door closing behind him. They moved through the house like two people who had made a quiet agreement, not to crowd each other, not to ask for more than the day required. It was manageable. It was, in its way, almost peaceful.Evelyn had gone out for errands. The house was still. Danica had her legs tucked under her on the sofa, sketchbook in her lap, a cup of tea going cold on the table beside her.The doorbell rang. She didn’t look up.She heard the house helper open the door. Heard a voice, clear and unhurried, a kind of voice that expected to be listened to.Then she heard her name. Not called out. Just said. Announced, almost.She looked up.The woman who walked in was dressed like she had somewhere better to be and had chosen here anyway. Flowers in her hand, yellow, wrapped in brown paper, and the easy, settled confidence of someone w
_Author’s POV_Grandma Cross didn’t lecture long.“Stay away from Sienna.” She told him again. Not because she had any particular feelings about the woman, though the slight curl of her mouth suggested otherwise and she didn’t bother correcting it. But because Danica was pregnant and living under his roof, and the least Eden owed her was a quiet environment. Stress was not abstract. They had already had one hospital scare. She said this the way she said most things, plainly, without performance, as if the facts were simply facts and it was up to Eden to do something with them.Then she told him something he wasn’t expecting.That she liked Danica. That she had liked her from the moment they met, before the wedding, before any of this became what it was. That the girl had a quietness to her that Grandma respected, the kind that came from actually having something going on inside, not the kind that was performed for an audience.She had dug into Dani’s history.“Don’t waste her,” She s
_Author’s POV_Danica was ready by eleven forty-five.She wasn’t going to think about that. It meant nothing. Eden had said noon and she was ready before noon and that was just called being organised.She came downstairs with her bag and Eden was already in the hallway in a dark coat looking the way he always looked, which was annoyingly put together, and she was very tired of noticing that. He glanced at her. She glanced at him.Neither of them said anything about yesterday morning.Not his arm around her waist that she had woken up to and spent a full minute pretending she was still asleep through because she didn’t know what else to do with herself.They had a silent agreement. It had not been discussed. It simply existed.Evelyn stood at the door to see them off with the expression of a woman trying very hard not to look like she was sending two children to be told off. She squeezed Danica’s hand once. Said nothing. Watched them get into the car.The drive was an hour and a half.
_Author’s POV_The house was quiet when Eden got home.Not the kind of quiet that felt empty. The kind that felt settled, like the whole building had exhaled and gone to sleep without waiting for him. The helpers were in bed. Evelyn wasn’t in the kitchen. No television sounds, no distant footsteps, no one rattling around anywhere. Just the low sound of a house that had decided it was done for the night.Eden was not drunk. He wanted to be clear about that, at least to himself. He was simply occupying the pleasant middle ground between fully sober and not, where his body knew what it was doing and his brain had agreed to be less annoying about everything. He loosened his tie in the hallway. Dropped his keys on the side table. Stood there for a second doing nothing in particular.He should go upstairs. To his room. The room with his bed in it, where he slept, like a normal person.He went upstairs.He just didn’t go to his room.He didn’t examine why his feet took him to her door inst
_Author’s POV_ Two extra days passed. Eden had been doing that thing where you keep moving so you don’t have to think. Back to back meetings, calls that ran into other calls, paperwork that didn’t actually need him but gave his hands something to do. It was working fine. Mostly. Except he kept seeing her face. Not all of it. Just that one specific moment. Danica turning toward the window, her shoulders shaking, both hands pressed over her mouth like she was trying to hold something in that had already decided it was coming out. He had stood there like an idiot and said her name twice and then left. He wasn’t calling it guilt. Guilt required stopping and he hadn’t stopped. His grandmother’s summons sat somewhere in the back of his head like a stone he kept stepping around. He was staring at a contract he had already read three times without retaining a single word when his office door opened at six thirty and Maxine walked in like he had a standing appointment. He didn’t.
_Author’s POV_Eden walked into the hospital alone.No security or his assistant trailing behind him. Just him, coat still on, like he had come straight from somewhere and hadn’t stopped to think about what he was walking into until he was already inside.Danica was awake when he walked into her room.She looked at him when the door opened, really looked, and then turned back to the ceiling like she had made a decision.He stood in the doorway for a second too long. Then he walked in properly and didn’t sit down yet. He looked at the monitor, at the room, at the thin hospital blanket pulled up to her waist, and something moved behind his eyes before he blinked it away.“I need to speak with the doctor,” he said. To nobody in particular.He found the doctor in the corridor, asked everything he needed to know, the kind of specific questions that didn’t leave room for vague reassurances. What caused it. What the risk level actually was. What rest meant in practical terms. The doctor an
_Author’s POV_Eden’s hand never left her arm.He guided her through the crowd with the kind of quiet authority that made people move without being asked. Nobody stopped him. Nobody stepped in his path. They just shifted, almost instinctively, creating space where there had been none.Danica stayed
_Author’s POV_The party was already in full swing by the time the car pulled up outside the venue.Danica had spent the better part of an hour convincing herself this was a terrible idea. She had gone back and forth, sitting in her room, staring at the ceiling. But every time she tried to talk her
_Danica’s POV_I couldn’t move.My legs refused to carry me toward the exit even though every part of me was screaming to leave. To walk out before anyone could see the embarrassment written all over my face. Before my eyes did something I would regret.I stood there, staring at the elevator doors
_Danica’s POV_When I woke up again later that evening, Evelyn informed me of Eden’s impending arrival. She’d carefully explained that his arrival would be in about 4 hours.I hated to admit it, but I looked forward to seeing him even after everything that happened.Maybe he’d explain, maybe he’d t







