She fell asleep in the middle of a sentence.
They'd come to bed late — the twins had needed settling, and Arianne had gone through another hour of Conway documents before finally closing her laptop. Franz had watched her slow down, her responses growing shorter, her blinks longer. When she finally lay back against the pillow and her voice trailed off mid-word, he didn't try to finish the thought. He turned off the lamp and let her go.
He lay down beside her. The sheets were cool and clean. The room was dark except for the faint glow of the lamp on the nightstand. Outside, the spring night was quiet — no wind, no traffic, just the soft hum of the estate settling into its bones.
He should sleep. He was exhausted too. But he couldn't.
He watched her instead. The way her hair spread across the pillow, dark against the white cotton. The way her face was relaxed in sleep — no tension in her jaw, no furrow between her brows. She looked younger like this. Unguarded.
