1. Five A.M.

[ Author's POV ]

The storm had been building since midnight.

The kind of sound that made the windows hum faintly in their frames, rain coming down less like weather and more like an argument the sky was having with itself.

It was the sort of morning built for staying under the blanket. The sort of morning that gave people permission to be late, to be soft, to let the alarm ring twice before silencing it.

The man in the small flat on the tenth floor didn't believe in that kind of permission.

At five o'clock exactly, before the alarm had the chance to go off, his eyes opened.

He lay still for a second, listening to the rain hammer the window, then swung his legs off the bed without hesitation no lingering, no negotiating with himself the way most people did in the dark.

He was built like a man who worked for it and never talked about it: broad through the shoulders, lean everywhere else, the kind of quiet strength that didn't announce itself in a room but was unmistakable up close forearms roped with muscle from years of training that had nothing to do with vanity and everything to do with discipline, a body kept less for the camera and more out of habit, the same habit that got him up at five regardless of what the sky was doing outside.

The flat was small, plain, lit by a single warm bulb in the kitchen that he switched on out of routine rather than need his eyes had long adjusted to doing most things in near dark.

He filled the kettle, set it on the stove instead of reaching for a machine that would've done it faster, and stood at the counter waiting for it to boil, arms crossed, watching the rain streak sideways against the window.

Coffee first. Always. Black, no sugar, in a chipped mug.

He drank half of it standing up, looking out at a city that hadn't woken up yet, then set the mug down and considered the storm properly for the first time. No point going out in that. He'd learned a long time ago not to fight weather; you simply worked around it.

So he pushed the low coffee table to one side of the front room, rolled out a mat that had gone thin and soft at the edges from use, and began.

No trainer. No mirror wall, no playlist blasting through expensive speakers, none of the things a man in his position could easily afford and simply didn't care to have. Just the rain outside, and the quiet, steady rhythm of a body that had been disciplined into knowing exactly what it needed without being told push-ups, then the floor work, then a set of stretches that loosened something in his shoulders that had been tight since yesterday's shoot.

Forty minutes later, sweat damp and breathing easy, he picked his phone up off the counter for the first time that morning.

The screen lit up with the usual pile of notifications messages from his manager, a reminder about call time, and underneath all of it, a news app open to the entertainment section, the way it always was, whether he wanted it to be or not.

'Asher Whitmore Spotted with Actress Roselynn at City Cafe on a secret date'

He almost laughed! Almost.

There was a photograph grainy, clearly taken from a phone at a distance, him & Rose by the light stand, both of them caught in the exact posture of two people kissing each other.

Asher set the phone face down on the counter without reading further.

It was a strange thing, being one of the most recognized faces in the country and living like this a 10th floor flat with no doorman, a kettle instead of a machine, a mat with thin edges instead of a home gym some interior designer had built for a magazine spread.

His agent called it "An Image Problem."

Asher called it Tuesday.

He rinsed the mug, set it in the rack beside the single plate that lived there, and went to shower, the storm still going outside, unbothered by any of it much like the man standing under the water a few minutes later, running through the day's schedule in his head and trying, without much success, not to think about a photograph he hadn't wanted taken, of an argument he hadn't wanted to lose.

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