Fragmented Morning

Morning didn't arrive like a promise.

It bled in quietly, hesitant, gray, uncertain.

The winter light slipped through the blinds like it wasn't sure it belonged there. London skies rarely offered anything decisive in January. The sun came late, stayed low, and left early, as though it had better things to do than warm the world.

Kairo Lancaster sat propped against two firm pillows, the hospital tray pushed aside. His hands, still slow to obey, held a single piece of paper.

Just a folded note.

No envelope. No name. No explanation.

"You told me once that love scared you. But you loved me anyway."

He had read it twelve times. Maybe more. Every time, it cut deeper.

Not because of what it said.

But because of how it felt.

Like memory, half-formed.

Like something sacred said only in the dark.

The handwriting was delicate, neat. Every letter placed with care, like the person who'd written it had rewritten it in her head a hundred times before finally putting it down for good.

There was no signature. No proof.

But the voice in the ink…

It was hers.

He didn't know who she was, not clearly. Her face was still out of reach. But the emotion inside the words struck something he hadn't even known was still alive in him. It wasn't logic. It wasn't cognition. It was recognition.

That feeling of standing in a room and sensing that someone else had just left it, someone who had meant something.

He glanced over at the wildflower beside the note.

Delicate. Slightly bent.

A little bruised around the petals.

This wasn't a nurse's decoration. It hadn't come from a hospital vase. This had been picked. Plucked by hand. A detail only someone who knew him would offer.

A choice, not a gesture.

His fingers moved on instinct. The pen beside his notepad was already warm in his hand. He flipped to the back of the page he'd scribbled on the night before.

A list had begun forming. Disjointed, yes but real.

Orange blossoms.

Lanterns.

Sunlight on skin.

A laugh that cracked the sky.

And now, a new line:

"You told me once that love scared you…"

He hesitated.

Then without trying to summon it, the word came.

Noelle.

His pen froze mid-stroke.

He stared at the name, his breath stalling.

His heart, steady moments before, beat once, hard.

Noelle.

The syllables echoed like the last line of a song he hadn't heard in years but still knew how to hum.

It felt right. Not just familiar.

It felt like his.

But no image followed.

No clear memory.

Just a shimmer of impressions, a laugh, close and unapologetic. Fingers in his hair. A warmth pressed against his side beneath a sky full of stars. A whispered yes, spoken not in ceremony, but in surrender.

Kairo pressed his thumbs to his temples, his eyes squeezed shut.

The doctors had warned him.

Told him not to trust these feelings. That the mind, after trauma, could play tricks. That emotions lie especially when you want them to be true.

But this didn't feel like a trick.

It felt like gravity.

Like every part of him was trying to fall back toward a woman he didn't remember but knew.

He could feel her in his skin.

In the ache in his chest.

In the part of his mind that reached into the darkness, again and again, searching.

A soft knock broke the silence.

Kairo looked up just as the door eased open and Elias Rowan stepped inside.

Of course it would be Elias.

Always polished. Always sharp. Even at dawn, he wore his tailored suit like it had been sewn onto him. Hair combed. Posture perfect. But Kairo knew him well enough to see the tightness around the eyes, the fatigue he never named.

"You're awake," Elias said, walking in without fanfare. "The entire company just exhaled."

Kairo managed the faintest smile. "You didn't?"

"I don't exhale until legal, PR, and market stabilization stop emailing me every nine minutes."

Typical Elias.

There was comfort in his presence measured, businesslike. Steady.

Kairo appreciated it more than he could say.

He ran a hand over his face. "I don't remember the crash. Or the flight. Or… anything from the last six months."

Elias nodded, unsurprised. "The doctors told us that might happen."

Kairo leaned his head back against the pillows. "What did happen?"

Elias glanced at the monitors, as if to confirm the timing of his answer.

"Private jet," he said. "You were leaving Marrakesh. Engine fire mid-flight. Crash wasn't clean. You survived. Most didn't."

Marrakesh.

The name dropped into Kairo's chest like a stone into deep water.

He blinked slowly.

"Was I alone?"

Elias hesitated.

"On the manifest?" he asked, buying a second.

Kairo nodded.

Elias pulled his phone from his pocket, tapped briefly. "Just your name and the pilot crew. No other passengers listed."

But Kairo didn't believe it.

Not for a second.

There had been someone.

He could feel it.

Like phantom pain. Like the imprint of a person on sheets long since changed.

He looked back at the wildflower.

Then the note.

Then the name scribbled quietly, off to the side of the page.

Noelle.

Elias noticed. "Who?" he asked softly.

Kairo didn't answer.

He didn't have to.

His eyes lingered on the flower.

And the name.

And something in him moved.

Because somewhere out there was a woman who had once whispered truth into his skin and loved him through storms he couldn't remember.

And even if the world said she didn't exist

His heart knew otherwise.