The rain hammered against the tall windows of the mansion that night, thunder rumbling across the dark sky. The house felt both too quiet and too restless, mirroring the chaos inside me.
I sat on the couch in the library, pretending to read one of Damian’s books, but I had been stuck on the same page for twenty minutes. My mind refused to settle. Every thought circled back to him, the way he looked at me that morning, how his voice deepened when we stood too close, the brief touch on my wrist during dinner when he seemed to forget himself.
I snapped the book shut. “This is ridiculous,” I muttered. My heart, unfortunately, didn’t agree.
The library felt like Damian more than any other room in the house, quiet, controlled, cold on the surface but hiding depths I couldn’t quite reach. I le
