It’s after two in the morning, and the villa pretends to be quiet. But it isn’t really, not for me.
Down the hall, through the hush of old wood and the low creak of footsteps, I hear her laugh. It drifts down the hallway like it has every right to haunt me. It’s light and real the way it is with very few people in her life. I used to think I could build immunity to it. Pretend it didn’t hit me the way it did when she was sixteen and still chasing ghosts around this house. I was wrong, and now it’s worse.
Now I can still taste her. Hours after the kiss, my mouth still remembers the shape of hers. My hands remember her waist, the sound she made when I pulled her close and the way she gasped, like she’d been waiting for it as long as I had. And I—God help me— still want to ruin her.
Hal
