Chapter 385 Morning After Dreams
+25 BONUS
Chapter 385 Morning After Dreams
**Mia’s POV**
I woke up on the couch with my neck bent at an angle that would hurt for the rest of the day.
The apartment was quiet.
Pale light came through the windows. Not sunrise exactly, but that gray hour before it when everything looks washed out and temporary.
I sat up slowly, my hand going to my neck. The throw blanket had fallen to the floor sometime during the night. My mouth tasted like old wine and sleep.
The living room looked different.
It took me a moment to understand why.
Someone had cleaned.
The wine glasses were gone from the coffee table. The candle stubs had been cleared away. The scattered plates and napkins from Sophie’s dinner party had disappeared. Even the cushions on the opposite chair-Kyle’s chair-had been straightened, the indent where he’d sat smoothed away like he was never there.
I stood up, my bare feet cold on the hardwood floor.
Had he really been here? Or had I dreamed the whole thing-Kyle sitting in the shadows, drinking from my wine glass, making jokes about breaking and entering?
I walked to the kitchen.
The sink was empty. Last night’s dishes had been washed and put away. The counters wiped clean. The trash bag that had been overflowing with Sophie’s cooking debris was gone, replaced with a fresh liner.
Kyle had done this. While I slept, he’d moved through my apartment like a ghost, putting things back in order. Taking care of things the way he used to when we were married, those rare Sunday mornings when I’d wake up to find him already making coffee, already tidying the small messes we’d accumulated during the week.
A piece of paper sat on the counter, folded once. My name written on it in Kyle’s precise handwriting.
I picked it up. My hands were shaking slightly.
Inside, just one word: “Morning”
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Chapter 385 Morning After Dreams
+25 BONUS
That was all.
1 folded the note throw it in the bin.
The garbage bags were gone. He must have taken them when he left.
I walked to the front door and opened it carefully, trying not to make noise that would wake the children. The hallway was empty, morning light filtering through the window at the far end.
I stepped out in my bare feet and pajamas. The loose brick in the front garden where I’d kept my spare key for years sat at the base of the building’s entrance steps.
I knelt down and lifted it.
The key was there, exactly where it should be. Where Kyle had found it last night.
I picked up the key and held it in my palm. The metal was cold.
I stood up and looked around the small garden area. A few scraggly bushes, a patch of dirt where someone had tried to plant flowers years ago and given up. There was a drainpipe that ran up the side of the building, painted the same dull brown as the bricks.
I reached up and tucked the key behind the drainpipe bracket, wedging it into the small space where the metal met the wall. You’d have to know exactly where to look to find it there.
“Mama?”
I turned around so fast I almost lost my balance.
Alexander stood in the doorway of our apartment building, his hair sticking up in seventeen different directions, his dinosaur pajamas twisted around his small body. He rubbed his eyes with
one fist.
“What are you doing outside without shoes?”
“I was just checking something,” I said, walking back toward him. “Why are you awake, buddy?”
“I had to pee.” He looked down at my bare feet with the serious concern only a five-year-old could muster. “You’re going to get cold. And maybe tetanus. Ethan said you can get tetanus from dirty things touching your skin.”
“Ethan is very smart, but I don’t think our front steps are going to give me tetanus.’
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