(Kate, alone. Late. The party is over.) The room smelled of perfume and candle wax, with the faintest whisper of someone else’s cologne still clinging to her skin. That was the thing about evenings like this — they stayed on you, long after the car door closed, long after the
(Kate, present day. After midnight. Alone.) She wasn’t looking for it. Not really. It slipped out from between two old case files, of all things — she’d shoved them into the drawer years ago when she still brought work home in hard copy. She should’ve thrown them out.
They’d stayed like that for a while — her limbs trembling, his mouth still hot with her. The bed warm beneath them, the room lit in honey stripes through the blinds. But something shifted. Aimee stretched, slow and unhurried, like a cat warming her spine. The movement drew his eyes,
The room smells of bergamot and sweat. Not fresh sweat — the warm, lived-in kind. Human. Honest. Gabby is near the front, her mat the colour of rich plum, her movements slow with the certainty of someone who has been here before. Not just the class — the ache, the effort, the
The bedroom was quiet but not still — the kind of hush that hums after conversation, when someone's stepped out of the room but left the door ajar. A low lamp glowed near the bed, turning the cream walls gold, and the sheets behind her were creased and warm
The bedroom was golden with that four-o’clock light — the kind that softened edges and slipped between the blinds like syrup. The laundry was done. The bed was made, loosely. And Aimee, with her hair pinned half-up then left to fall, sat at the edge in pale black lace. Not
The bath ran slow, as if it knew how much she needed it. The copper tub had been a gift to herself, the sort of expense she'd once asked permission for — but not anymore. It stood in the middle of her small bathroom like a sculpture, round-bellied and