The morning light in the Oregon cabin didn't hit like the sharp, neon-filtered glare of Manhattan.
It arrived.
Slow. Patient. Golden.
It slipped through the tall Douglas firs and filtered into the room like something alive, brushing across the cedar walls, warming everything it touched.
I woke up not to the sound of a stock ticker or a vibrating phone, but to the steady, rhythmic thud-thud of an axe outside.
I stayed in bed for a moment, tangled in the heavy wool blankets, simply breathing.
My life used to be measured in seconds. In contracts. In numbers that dictated whether people lived comfortably or not at all.
Now
it was measured by the temperature of the air and the sound of Reid Sterling—the most dangerous mind I'd ever known—splitting firewood so I'd be warm when I finally got up.
I turned my face into the pillow, inhaling faint traces of him—cedar, smoke, and something unmistakably Reid—and for a second, I just… let myself exist inside it.
