"T-this is—"
The words fractured upon Adriana's tongue and died there, leaving her stranded in the middle of the room like she'd stepped off the edge of the known world and found only void beneath her feet.
She could not finish;
The revelation had stripped language from her, leaving nothing but the raw, trembling fact of it hanging in the golden air between them.
Roxanne did not flounder, she simply stared, and none of the Hot Rude Neighbor's usual theatrical flailing or undignified stammering touched her.
Yet her eyes had widened, gone glassy and vast, and in that silence they spoke every unspeakable thing Adriana's broken sentence could not:
If not more.
The quiet ones always carried the heavier storms.
At the still heart of both reactions sat Melissa, lowering herself onto the couch with the careful grace like she understood that even furniture might protest the weight of miracles.
