When love turns to ashes
For now, he allowed himself the luxury of ordinary presence: the careful sipping of warm tea, the quiet trading of small comments, June’s soft laugh as she teased him about his clumsy attempts at telling a joke.
They kept conversation light and ordinary until they could not anymore. As the hour grew late and the ward’s lights dimmed to the hush of midnight rounds, they finally rose. June kissed Valerie’s forehead and, for the first time in a long while, felt something like a cautious, replenishing hope.
They walked out together into the cool night, each with unspoken burdens, each with a small, private resolve.
For Xander, the dinner had been everything he wanted it to be and everything he f