Morning light came in thin and grey through the half-closed blinds of Lucas’s bedroom. The party debris still lived in the rest of the house empty bottles on the kitchen counter, a single red cup tipped over on the stairs, the faint sticky smell of spilled beer that had soaked into the hallway rug. But in here the air was quieter, warmer, thick with the scent of skin and the aloe Zoe had rubbed into the rope marks on her ankles sometime after midnight.
She was still in the bed.
Lucas woke first. Her hand lay open on his chest, fingers loose, the same way it had been when she finally fell asleep. Her bare legs were tangled with his; the rope was gone, left in a small coil on the floor near the dresser where he’d dropped it. Across the room the door was still locked. Ryan had taken the key
