ARIA'S POV
She didn't sleep well the night before.
Not badly. Not the old bad....not the hospital ceiling, not the nightmares, not the waking up at three AM with her heart going and her lungs refusing to cooperate. Just the particular sleeplessness of someone who had a large thing happening tomorrow and whose brain had decided to spend the night going through it.
Damien was awake too.
She knew because his breathing was wrong....too even, the deliberate evenness of a man lying still so he didn't wake her, which meant he'd known she was awake too and they'd both been lying there in the dark being awake at each other for probably an hour.
"We're both terrible at this," she said to the ceiling.
"At what," he said.
"Waiting."
A pause.
"Yes," he said.
She turned toward him. He turned toward her. In the dark of the room she could see the shape of his face, the particular stillness of him when he was thinking something he hadn't decided to say yet.
