Chapter 43
The lights in the safehouse flickered as the wind howled outside. Alicia sat curled on the edge of a worn couch, her hands wrapped tightly around a chipped coffee mug she hadn’t sipped from in over an hour. Her gaze was fixed on the floor, but her mind spiraled elsewhere—stuck between memories and regrets. She hadn’t heard from Ryan since the ball. Not a text. Not a call. Not even a whisper through their encrypted channels. And Quinn… Alicia shut her eyes. Quinn had looked at her like he’d seen a ghost. Like everything they shared—the lazy mornings, the small, unspoken gestures, the quiet kind of love—was suddenly meaningless. Because it had been a lie. At least for her. At first. She didn’t know when it changed. When the mission blurred into something else. She was meant to observe,
- Writer
