Chapter 33: On His Own Terms
Saturday arrived with six days on the clock and the particular stillness of a rest day that knew it wasn't entirely restful.
April felt it when she woke up — the shift in the atmosphere, the sense of something gathering at the edges of the next week like weather building on the horizon. She lay in bed for a few minutes listening to the apartment, to her mother moving in the kitchen, to the distant sound of the city outside the window, and thought about the question Kai had put on the table on Friday.
That is Jaden's decision to make.
She had been thinking about it since the meeting. Not pushing toward an answer — it wasn't her answer to push toward — but turning it over the way you turned over something with significant weight, feeling the shape of it, understanding what it meant.
