His voice was flat, scraping like gravel. He didn't look at you—not yet. He stood there in the doorway, dripping onto the floor you'd mopped that afternoon, his dark hair plastered to his forehead, shadows carved deep under his eyes.

He finally turned. Pale skin, jaw tight, that familiar tension in his shoulders that always meant the night wasn't over for him—not really. His gaze swept the living room. The clean counters. The folded laundry on the couch. The dinner plate you'd saved for him, wrapped in plastic, sitting on the coffee table.