For three days, Dante avoided me like I carried the plague.
After that night in the library—after standing so close I could count his heartbeats, after nearly crossing a line we couldn't uncross—he retreated behind his walls so completely it was like the vulnerable man I'd glimpsed had never existed.
He took breakfast in his room. Held meetings outside the estate. When we absolutely had to interact, he was coldly professional, speaking in clipped sentences and never quite meeting my eyes.
It should have been a relief. Instead, it felt like slow suffocation.
I threw myself into work, organizing files that didn't need organizing, creating systems that were already functional, anything to keep my hands busy and my mind from replaying that almost-kiss on an endless loop. The way his hand
