✤ Adrian ✤
I felt like the worst kind of coward. Not because I didn’t care. That was the cruel irony of it all. I cared too much. Too deeply. And that was exactly what had paralyzed me. Every instinct inside me screamed to pull Sera close, to reassure her, to tell her everything I was thinking and feeling. But fear had wrapped itself around my spine and refused to let go.
Julian.
The thought of him lingered constantly, like a shadow just behind my shoulder. Watching. Listening. Waiting for me to slip. I couldn’t shake the feeling that every hallway glance, every pause in conversation, every shift in my behavior was being catalogued. And the price of being wrong was unbearable. My career. My reputation. Her future. Her name.
So, I had done the one thing that felt safest in the moment.
