Emma's POV
The week moved in a rhythm I didn't recognize, a pace that felt both startlingly new and strangely inevitable. Mornings in the apartment had become an anchor—Damian moving around the kitchen with controlled efficiency, me sleepily sketching notes for the Sterling Tower façade. There was a softness to the routine, a quiet domesticity neither of us had planned for but both of us fell into like muscle memory.
But underneath it all—under the calm breakfasts, the architectural debates, the easy silences—there was something else. A hum. A tension. A sense of a storm building just past the edge of my awareness.
I tried to ignore it.
My drafting table in the new living room was finally set up exactly the way I wanted it. The track lighting Damian personally installed cast perfect illumination across the tracing paper. My pencils were lined in their new holder, the models arranged on the side table, my laptop angled precisely toward the balcony doors.
