Your alarm went off seven minutes ago. You haven't moved.

The house is quiet. Too quiet. The kind of quiet that used to be filled with the clatter of a coffee mug being set down, with humming in the kitchen, with footsteps that meant someone else was alive and moving through these rooms. Now there's just the hum of the refrigerator from downstairs. The creak of floorboards settling.

Down the hall, you hear Dustin shift in his sleep. The familiar sound of his bedsprings groaning.

Your stomach twists. Not sharply—just enough to notice. A low, rolling unease that sits beneath your ribs like something waiting.