If soup didn’t exist, I’d have given up by now.
A text from Colette pings through on my cracked phone screen.
Colette
Power is back on in the Cortinar halls! Meet us there.
Colette
I’ll microwave popcorn!!
Popcorn sounds good right now. I tuck my phone back into my pocket and duck under the branches that sag over the overgrown trail back to the mansion. A twig crunches somewhere ahead of me, and I freeze in place. The pea-sized rational part of my brain reminds me that this is a university. That there are students all over the campus. That not everyone here is a stalker.
A figure steps onto the main path, and I stagger backward. My rib cage feels too small, a constrictive cage preventing my lungs from inflating.
It’s not a stalker.
It’s not an angry student.
It’s worse.
It’s Alex.
My brain asks my feet to turn and run, but they kindly decline. I stand there, mouth opening and closing like if I keep going, something good might come out of it. The hundred things I want to say to him have all rushed up at once, forming a gelatinous ball that clogs my throat.
His black boots are covered in snow, but he’s perfectly dressed. Shirt ironed, slacks pressed, damp hair falling in that messy middle part. The cherry of the cigarette in his mouth glows, the look in his eye agonized. He doesn’t move, doesn’t speak, like a hunter desperate not to scare off his prey.
I don’t know why, but I thought he’d look different. More menacing, taller, bigger,older. The CEO I read about in the news feels like a different beast than the boy who spent his boxing day stringing up fairy lights in a rental car so I could experience my first Christmas in years.
But he just looks like … Alex.
He opens his mouth to speak, but I can’t bear to hear it. There’s nothing he could say that would ease the sting of the past couple of months. I shake my head at him, desperate for silence for once in my life. I’m not ready for how much hearing his voice will hurt.
Whatever it is he wants to say, I’m not ready for it. I just hope it isn’t something idiotic likehi.
Chapter 6
ALEX
“Hi.”
Five days of rehearsing my speech for Ophelia, and those are the two letters that come out of my mouth.
I’d like to reach out and snatch them back from the space between us, but I can’t.
She’s frozen in place, staring at me like she’s half a second away from running. “Ophelia, I—”
“Hi?” she whispers, voice hoarse. Just thesoundof her aches. “Hi!?”
A lump forms in my throat, sliding down my esophagus until it’s a heavy stone in my stomach.
I’m so fucking sorry.
I run a hand through my hair. “Not my finest work. Fuck, Ophelia. Please hear me out.”
“No,” she croaks, shaking her head. “Please, no.”
I take a step forward. She takes one back. We’ve been here before, on this same path, right after she hid under Carmichael’s couch. Only then, I felt like I wasfinallyon the edge of having her. Now I’m inches from losing her forever.
