A breath passed between us. “Fine.But I draw the line at you murdering people.”
I blinked at him.
Then rolled my eyes.
“Wow. Good to know,” I muttered. “Really solid rule. Thank you for clarifying that, Daddy.”
His mouth pulled at the corner.
I smiled back, and his body swayed as though the simple act of my smiling was enough to knock him off his feet.
“Fuck, you’re pretty.”
The tips of my ears burned. I hadn’t ever been called pretty before, but I liked it.
A lot.
Chest to chest now, Henry caught my face and took my mouth in a firm kiss. When he pulled back, his thumb stayed at my cheek for a beat longer, then dropped.
“Come here, baby.”
He turned toward the desk, gathering the yearbooks from the floor as he went, stacking them in his hands before spreading them out across the surface. Pages opened under his fingers, worn from how many times he’d gone through them already.
“Dean Randolph was on the faculty when I was a student at Ashford,” he said, flipping one open and flattening it with his palm. “He taught literature. Upper level courses. He kept a low profile, but everyone knew him.”
I stepped in beside him, my shoulder brushing his arm without thinking about it.
“His name wasn’t in the records I found in the annex, but that sure as fuck doesn’t clear him.” He scanned the page like he’d memorized it already. “Maybe he was careful. Or his role didn’t require documentation.”
“Are you sure it’s him?”
His nostrils flared. “He’s the only connection to Ashford that makes sense. Randolph stayed in the academic system. Built a career. He moved through Ashford before ending up at Wexley.”
That felt…uncomfortablyintentional.
Weight shifting, I studied the pages, trailing the rows of faces that made up Henry’s past. I wasn’t sure what I’d notice that he already hadn’t, but I was determined to?—
Oh.
My attention caught on a page I hadn’t meant to look at twice. There was a pull to it I couldn’t explain, drawing me in until the rest of the room began to blur at the edges.
A photograph sat there, just another group shot at first glance, but the longer I looked, the more my skin started to crawl.
He was in the back row, half-hidden behind taller shoulders, the kind of placement that made a person easy to ignore unless you were actually looking.
I know him.
Not here. Not in this context. But Iknewhim—well enough that my brain started pulling pieces together.
The tilt of his head…
The way he stood just a little apart from everyone else, like he wasn’t really part of the group…
Iknewthat stance.
I’d watched it from across a yard.
From my kitchen window.
