14.
~Felix~
The door bursts open.
Time dilates in that terrible way it does just before a car crash, when you know it's coming but there's nothing you can do to stop it.
Georgina is standing in the doorway, her overnight bag in hand, mouth open as if to say something.
But it’s only half the door that opens.
It hits something behind it—Soren’s backpack, I realize distantly— and the momentum makes the small bookshelf beside the door to shake.
Books cascade down.
One. Two. Five. A whole bunch of paperbacks and textbooks crashing on the floor in a chaotic rumble and that sound just distracts us for exactly 3 seconds.
Three seconds that might save our lives.
I move on pure instinct.
My hand yanks out of Soren’s jeans. She gasps — whether from shock or loss, I can’t tell — and I spin,
