EMMALINE
I’ve been staring at this single page for over an hour.
The words are there—black and unmoving—but I’m not reading them. My mind is a knot of thoughts, each one tugging a different direction until my head feels like it might split open.
I trace the margin with the tip of my pen, watching the ink smudge, and tell myself stories to keep from thinking about anything that matters.
The door opens. The sound snaps me out of it. Alexander slips into the room quieter than I expect, like he’s trying not to announce himself, but the look on his face tells me everything before he says a word.
I haven’t seen him in days. I was starting to believe he’d decided to avoid me—maybe because he’d somehow learned of my plans to seduce him, maybe because he finally understood the kind of dange
