OLIVIA’S POV
Ethan came to the house for a meeting that afternoon.
I heard him arrive from the library. His voice in the entrance hall. Warm and easy in the way it always was. The kind of person who filled a room with a comfortable energy without trying to. I had decided early on that I liked Ethan. Marcus and Ethan were the only people in Jaden’s world who spoke to me like a person rather than a component of an arrangement.
I stayed in the library.
I was not avoiding the meeting. I simply had no place in it and I had learned to read which parts of this house were mine and which belonged to Jaden’s work.
I managed forty minutes of reading before I gave up.
The words kept sliding off the page. I kept returning to the common room. To the photograph. To the expression on Jaden’s face w
