By the time I pulled into the long driveway of Alex and my mother’s sleek modern house, my hands were steady again. Cold. Determined. The front door was unlocked, just as he’d said. I stepped inside quietly, the cool air-conditioned silence wrapping around me like a shroud. Instead of finding him in the kitchen, I followed the soft glow of light down the hallway to his home office.
Alex was sitting behind his large oak desk, but he wasn’t working. He had clearly just come home from a long day. His black button-down shirt was open almost to his navel, the fabric parted to reveal the hard, sculpted planes of his chest and the dark trail of hair that disappeared beneath his belt. Silver threaded through the dark hair at his temples, and his jaw was shadowed with a day’s worth of stubble. At
