Over the past few days, I had started to notice it.
Victor was watching me again.
Not openly, not in a way anyone else would see, but I felt it in the way his eyes stayed on me a second too long before he looked away, in the way the air changed whenever I walked into a room, in the way silence followed us like something waiting to happen.
He was still cold.
Still distant.
But no longer untouched.
And I didn't know why that made my heart beat faster.
That night, I had been on my way to the garden.
The air outside looked calm, the kind of quiet that usually helped me think, and I had already decided I needed that space, but as I stepped into the hallway, I saw Victor.
He didn't see me.
He stood by Lily's door, slightly bent as he pressed a soft kiss to her forehead, his voice low, gentle in a way I had not heard in days.
"Goodnight, baby… I love you."
I stopped walking.
I watched him.
