ARIA'S POV
She woke up before he did.
That was unusual .... Damien was always awake before her, had been since the beginning, the particular early morning quality of a man whose brain didn't know how to stay still. But this morning he was asleep beside her.
She lay there.
She looked at the ceiling.
She thought.....I'm married.
Not anxiously. Not with the calculating part of her brain that usually got to everything first. Just the simple fact of it, sitting in her chest warm and certain.
She was married.
She turned her head.
He was on his side facing her, one arm loose between them, his face in sleep doing the thing it did....the particular unguarding of it, the composed controlled version of him completely absent, just the actual face underneath. The one she'd been collecting for a year. The one nobody else got to see.
She looked at the ring on her finger.
