~Amelia~
The first day after the letter, I told myself I was imagining it.
Kaden was fine. He was present, he was functional, he did everything he was supposed to do. He answered messages, he sat through a briefing with Caleb, he made sure I ate dinner. Normal Kaden stuff. But there was this half-second lag to everything like a video where the audio is just slightly out of sync with the picture. Nothing you'd catch if you weren't paying attention. Nothing most people would even notice.
I noticed.
When he reached for my hand at dinner, there was a pause before he did it. Just a small one. When I asked him something simple, what he wanted to do about the ceremony seating, he answered but he took a beat longer than he usually did, like he was deciding something first. When I came out of the bathroom and found him already in bed reading, he looked up and smiled and the smile was real, but there was something behind his eyes doing a different calculation entirely.
