ASHER
Life had settled into something I didn't have a word for. It was not perfect yet and I had stopped believing in perfection a long time ago but something close to it. Something that felt like what normal was supposed to feel like when you stopped fighting everything long enough to let it be what it was.
Reed and I had fallen into a rhythm without discussing it.
In the mornings he would appear at my door before breakfast. Not always with a reason. Sometimes just to walk with me to the dining hall, his hand finding mine in the corridor like it had always been there.
Classes we were separated for the most part but the bond kept him present regardless, a warmth at the edge of my awareness that I had stopped trying to ignore. In the afternoon he found me and in the evenings he kept me close.
