Heat pressed through the curtains like a hand. Chase opened his eyes to sunlight slanted across a duvet he could almost name—cheap cotton, a small coffee stain at the corner where he'd fallen asleep after cramming. The room smelled faintly of lemon oil and old books. He blinked. For a beat the world felt wrong and right at the same time: the ceiling fan creaked in the exact rhythm his seventeen-year-old heart used to hate, and a bright yellow sticky note stared back at him from the lamp, the handwriting severe and neat. "Magnanimous — very generous in forgiving," it read. His mouth worked without permission. Magnanimous. He remembered the word perfectly. He remembered the night he didn't have to remember any more words because he'd been busy making deals and pretending to sleepwalk his way through a life he hadn't chosen. He sat up too fast. The mattress groaned the way a teenager's box spring does, not the memory-foam thump of an executive apartment. He ran a hand over his face and felt the little ridge along the bridge of his nose—thin, fragile. Not mine? No, it was his. Teenage. Slightly crooked from a high school sports injury? The skin there caught the light and made him wince. When had he last worried about nasal bridges? He reached for his phone, fingers shaking in a way he wouldn't allow in boardrooms. The lock screen showed a background he knew