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Guilt settles over me like a heavy blanket on my shoulders. I don’t know exactly what my dad makes in a year, but I Googled it once. They make a minimum of mid-six figures, and most people in Andarusia don’t make anything close to that.
When the car comes to a stop at the front entrance, I stare out the window at the students mingling on the lawn. Their relaxed faces and laughter are vulgar in the face of what’s happening right now outside their gates.
But they’re too absorbed in teen drama and shopping trips to care. They don’t even have the decency to look guilty.
“Miss Willow?” Ivan says.
“Yeah?”
He glances at me in the rearview mirror. His face is scrunched together like he’s debating what to say. “You should know your father wanted to attend your mother’s funeral.”
I stiffen.
“I was supposed to drive him to the airport that day, but there was a bombing. All the flights were grounded.”
My bookbag slides off my shoulder when I startle. “Wait, did you just say a bombing?”
“Yes, at the House of Parliament.”
So many questions are racing through my mind, but I ask the most pertinent one. “Was anybody hurt?”
“Ah, no, thankfully.” He gives me a tight smile in the mirror. “It was a homemade bomb that malfunctioned and went off after hours. No one was in the vicinity.”
My mouth goes dry. “Is Andarusia a dangerous place?”
“It can be. But your father is well-protected, and so are you. Don’t worry.” He sighs. “I just thought you should know why your father couldn’t be there.”
Normally I would say something snarky, like telling him to mind his own business, but I’m still reeling from all this information.
My dad can’t use a bombing as an excuse for being an absent parent for seventeen years. But he wouldn’t bring me here if I was in legitimate danger.
Right?
When I enter Löwin Hall, I hold my breath. Heart racing, I lift my eyes to Alek’s desk behind mine in the back of the room.
He isn’t here.
Class doesn’t start for another ten minutes, so not everyone is here yet. But the thought of not seeing Alek today makes my chest tighten.
I take my seat and pull out the latest novel Prisha lent me. It’s a paperback book, but I haven’t been able to get more than twenty pages in since Saturday night. I keep rereading the same words over and over, but they won’t sink in.
It’s hard to focus when I can’t get the taste of Alek’s lips out of my head.
I reach the end of another paragraph, realizing I didn’t absorb a single word.
“Miss me, malishka?”
Alek’s voice strokes my ear like velvet, and I freeze. His breath fans the back of my head, which makes an icy shudder shoot down my spine.
“H-How did you do that?”
“Do what?”
I speak with a trembling whisper. “I didn’t see you come in.”
“Were you waiting for me? I’m flattered.”
His fingertips touch my back, tracing abstract circles across the fabric of my blazer. The featherlight caresses send another shiver through my veins, and though it turns my blood cold, I want more.
