I woke up on the wrong side of the apartment.
Not the guest suite. Not behind the deadbolt with the key on the nightstand. The other side. His side. The sheets smelled like cedar because the sheets had always smelled like cedar and now I knew it wasn't cologne or memory or the ghost of a ranch outside Limon. It was him. The scent lived in his skin the way the altitude lived in mine — something carried from the place that made you, embedded so deep that no amount of city or concrete or forty-two stories could wash it out.
He was asleep.
