ALEXANDER
I was in the middle of a good sleep when my phone beeped. The sound was sharp in the silence of my room, dragging me out of sleep.
For a second, I thought I had dreamed it, but then it buzzed again, and my eyes cracked open. I reached for it sluggishly, rubbing at the grit in my eyes with one hand while the other fumbled across the bedside table until it landed on the device.
The screen lit up, blinding me for a moment. A notification. An image.
From Irene.
My eyebrows knit together immediately. Irene hardly ever sent me anything directly, especially not out of the blue this late at night. I sat up in bed, back against the headboard, squinting at the glowing screen. My thumb swiped the message open, and there it was—of all things, a picture of a pair of shoes.
Shoes.
I s
