Eliott went home still simmering, his mother's story looping through his head on repeat. Alex was struggling because of her own family, and something about that specific injustice sat wrong with him in a way business problems never did. His mother had warned him, gently, to take it easy — she knew her son well enough to know he wouldn't let this rest, and she'd looked almost as unsettled by that knowledge as he felt.
By the time he got home it was past eleven. He showered, tried to sleep, and gave up almost immediately — he wanted to see her too badly for rest to be an option. He stepped out onto his balcony for air instead, and there she was: hair loose in the wind, headphones on, swaying slightly to whatever she was listening to, entirely unaware she had an audience.
He turned his own balcony light on for the first time since she'd moved in, and something in his chest eased just from watching her.
