### **Chapter 135 (

Stability, she learned, was not the absence of change.

It was the confidence that you could survive it.

A year passed quietly after Daniel returned from those six months away. There were no dramatic crossroads, no career ultimatums, no emotional earthquakes. Just life—steady, layered, real.

Their apartment by the river no longer felt temporary. It felt claimed. His shoes rested permanently by the door. Her books stacked beside the bed they shared. Their routines ...