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I go very still.

The leather-soft fabric smells like him. Cedar, spice, clean starch, and a deeper note beneath it that my body has apparently decided is home now, which is a problem for several reasons I don't have the strength to name.

I look up.

He's still working.

Or pretending to.

His eyes are on the screen, but his jaw is too tight, his posture too aware.

"You put this on me," I say quietly.

He doesn't look up. "You were cold."

I touch the sleeve. "Thank you."

That's when he glances over.

Only for a second.

Long enough that the air between us pulls taut in the low, private light of the cabin.

Then he looks away again.

"You drool in your sleep," he says.

My mouth falls open. "I do not."

"You absolutely do."

"I hate you."

"No, you don't."

The words land too softly.

Too accurately.

I yank the jacket tighter around me and stare out the window so he won't see the blush climbing back into my face.

By the time the pilot announces our descent, my nerves are back in full force.

The coastline below is impossible.

Blue water. Bright white boats cutting across it. Clusters of terracotta roofs and gleaming hotels and hills rolling up behind the sea like the whole south of France was painted by someone with no respect for subtlety.

My chest tightens.

This place.

My place.

Or the place that was always supposed to become mine someday, if life had gone the way my mother imagined it would.

I press closer to the window without thinking.

"It's beautiful," I whisper.