EMMALINE
It’s been a week since the welcome ceremony. My knees are smooth again, the skin pink but healed, though sometimes they still ache faintly when I kneel or bend too quickly. I run my palm over them out of habit, tracing where the scrapes used to be, still surprised at how quickly the marks faded. If only everything else did.
Alexander hasn’t been around much since that night. Or maybe that’s not entirely true. His presence lingers here in ways I can’t ignore, like an expensive suit jacket draped over the back of a chair, his cologne faintly clinging to the air, the sound of footsteps moving down the hall long after I’ve already fallen asleep. He’s like a ghost who leaves traces but no body to prove he was ever there.
But I haven’t seen him. Not really.
He comes in when I’m alre
