Chapter 149

Chapter 149
Edward POV


I woke to sunlight streaming through the window. For the first time in what felt like months, maybe years, I'd slept deeply enough that waking felt like surfacing from a great depth rather than being yanked back to consciousness by anxiety or obligation. My body felt rested in a way I'd almost forgotten was possible, muscles loose and relaxed, mind clear instead of already churning through the day's demands before my eyes were fully open.

The first thought that came to me, before I'd even fully processed where I was or what day it was, was Anna. She let me kiss her in her tiny kitchen, and she kissed me back like maybe, just maybe, she was starting to believe we could be something other than what we'd been.

I lay there for a moment, watching the light shift across the ceiling, and let myself imagine it—what it would be like if this became our normal. If I could wake up every morning knowing I'd see her later, cook with her, learn the small details of her preferences and habits. The thought made something in my chest expand and contract simultaneously, hope and fear tangled so tightly I couldn't separate them.

My phone sat on the nightstand where I'd left it last night, and I reached for it before the rational part of my brain could remind me it was barely past six-thirty, that Anna had been exhausted when I'd left her, that she probably needed sleep more than she needed another message from me. But my fingers were already moving, typing out words before I could second-guess them.

[Morning. I want to see you today. I'll bring breakfast—what would you like?]

I hit send and immediately stared at the screen, watching the message shift from "Delivering" to "Delivered," waiting for those three dots that would tell me she was awake, that she was reading it, that she was deciding how to respond. Seconds ticked by. Then a minute. Then two. The screen stayed blank, no indication she'd even seen it, and I made myself set the phone down, made myself remember that normal people didn't check their messages at six-thirty in the morning, that she was probably still asleep, that I needed to learn the difference between attentiveness and obsession.

The apartment felt too quiet, too empty in that specific way spaces feel when you've gotten used to someone else's presence and then suddenly they're gone. I'd lived here alone for month, had preferred it that way, had deliberately kept this place separate from the rest of my life—no family visits, no business meetings, just a neutral space where I could think without the weight of the Frost name pressing down on every surface. But last night, walking in after dropping Anna off, I'd noticed the silence in a way I never had before.

I got up, went through the motions of my morning routine—shower, shave, the careful selection of clothes that had become so automatic I barely registered doing it anymore. But today I found myself pausing in front of the closet, thinking about what Anna had said once during our marriage, back when she'd still tried to talk to me about things that didn't matter to the business. Something about how I always looked like I was about to walk into a board meeting, even on weekends. I'd dismissed it then, had thought she was criticizing me for taking my responsibilities seriously. Now I wondered if she'd been trying to tell me, in her careful way, that I never let myself relax, never let myself be anything other than Edward Frost, CEO, heir, the man who had to be perfect because anything less was failure.

I chose dark jeans instead of slacks, a navy cashmere sweater instead of a button-down and tie. Casual, but still put-together. The kind of thing a normal person might wear to bring breakfast to someone they cared about on a Sunday morning. The face that looked back at me from the mirror seemed almost unfamiliar—less severe somehow, the harsh lines around my mouth softened by something I was afraid to name but couldn't quite suppress.

By seven-fifteen, I'd given up on waiting for Anna to respond and was in my car, heading toward the one place in this city that I knew made the kind of breakfast that actually felt like someone gave a damn. There was a diner in the West Village, the kind of place that had been there since the seventies and still served coffee in thick ceramic mugs and didn't care if you sat there for three hours reading the paper. I'd discovered it by accident years ago, during one of those early mornings when I couldn't sleep and couldn't stand being alone with my thoughts, and it had become a strange sort of refuge—anonymous, unpretentious, the kind of place where nobody knew who I was and nobody cared.

The morning traffic was light, the city still half-asleep, and I made good time through streets where the early sun turned the glass towers to mirrors and the shadows between buildings to deep pools of blue-gray. The diner was already busy when I arrived, the windows fogged with steam, the smell of bacon and fresh coffee drifting out into the street. Inside, it was exactly as I remembered—worn red vinyl booths, checkered linoleum floors, a long counter with chrome-edged stools, the kind of place that looked like it hadn't changed in years because it hadn't needed to.

The waitress behind the counter looked up when I walked in, an older woman with gray hair pulled back in a ponytail and the kind of efficient, no-nonsense demeanor that came from decades of dealing with early-morning customers. She didn't recognize me, which was exactly what I wanted, just nodded toward an empty booth and said, "Sit anywhere, hon. Coffee?"

"Actually, I need to order takeout," I said. "For two people. Pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon, hash browns—and do you have fresh fruit? Maybe a fruit salad or something?"

She raised an eyebrow slightly, like she was surprised by the request but not particularly interested in why I was ordering breakfast for two at seven-thirty on a Sunday morning. "We got mixed berries," she said. "Strawberries, blueberries, little bit of melon. That work?"

"Perfect. And coffee—two large coffees. One black, one with cream and sugar on the side." I paused, remembering the way Anna had looked at the coffee maker in her apartment yesterday, the slightly apologetic expression when she'd admitted she was out of decent beans. "Actually, make it three coffees. All with cream and sugar available."

Something in the waitress's expression softened slightly, like maybe she'd decided I wasn't just some corporate asshole ordering breakfast but someone who actually cared about getting it right. "You want the pancakes plain or with something? We got blueberries, chocolate chips, bananas—"

"Blueberries," I said, because I remembered Anna mentioning once, in passing during our marriage, that she liked blueberries. It had been such a small comment, so inconsequential that I'd barely registered it at the time, but apparently some part of my brain had filed it away for future reference.

"Fifteen minutes," the waitress said, already turning toward the kitchen. "You can wait at the counter if you want."

I settled onto one of the chrome stools and pulled out my phone again, checking for messages even though I knew there wouldn't be any. The screen was still blank except for my own unanswered text from earlier, sitting there like a question I didn't know how to answer. What would you like? I'd asked, as if I had any right to assume she'd want me to bring her breakfast, as if last night's dinner had erased all the times I'd ignored her attempts to cook for me, all the times I'd made her feel like her efforts didn't matter.