Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Four
Leona
A few days passed before anything felt different again.
Not in the way it had before. Not sharp. Not immediate. Not something that forced me to stop and react. It was slower than that. Quieter. The kind of shift that settled into place without announcing itself, only noticeable once it had already happened.
The first day after the panic, I stayed in my room longer than usual.
Not out of fear. Not exactly. My body had needed time to come back fully into itself, and I had learned the hard way that forcing that process only made it uglier.
I slept in fragments. Sat by the window when I could not.
Walked from one side of the room to the other because stillness sometimes felt too close to helplessness.
By the second day, the raw edge had dulled enough for me to open the door without bracing first. By the third, I was moving through the house again on purpose.
Not because anything had been erased.
Because I had decided I would not let it keep taking space from me.
The halls didn’t feel unfamiliar anymore.
The turns had become instinctive, the rooms mapped out in a way that no longer required active thought.
I knew when the house was occupied and when it only felt that way.
I knew which stair complained under too much weight and which doors were decorative boundaries more than real ones.
I knew which members of staff would meet my eyes and which ones looked just slightly past me, respectful in a way that still reminded me I was being accounted for.
That hadn’t changed.
What had changed was that I didn’t stop moving because of it.
I stood at the kitchen counter now with my hands resting lightly against the stone, looking out the window at the grounds beyond.
My posture had relaxed in ways I didn’t fully trust yet.
The tension that used to sit just beneath my skin wasn’t gone, but it wasn’t driving me anymore.
It sat where I could reach it. Where I could brace against it.
Where I could, most of the time, control it.
That mattered.
I hadn’t seen Daan again.
That mattered too.
Not because I expected he would disappear. Men like him never really disappeared. They just shifted where they stood. The absence felt deliberate. Arranged. Like something had been adjusted somewhere outside my view and I had been allowed to notice the result without being included in the decision.
I hadn’t asked about it.
Not yet.
Marius had been different too. Not in a way anyone else would have seen.
Not in a way that invited comment. But I noticed.
The distance he kept now was more intentional.
Not avoidance. Not withdrawal. Just measured.
He didn’t hover. Didn’t check in constantly.
Didn’t insert himself into my space unless there was a reason.
But he was aware.
Always.
I could feel it even when I couldn’t see him, the same way I had started to feel the house itself.
Structured. Controlled. Never fully unguarded.
He had made one thing clear, with words and without them: Daan would not approach me again.
Since then, the corridors had felt less open in one way and safer in another, and I hated that both of those things could be true at once.
Our conversations hadn’t stopped.
They had changed.
They were shorter now. More direct. Less circling, less posturing. He answered what he chose to answer and didn’t insult either of us by pretending otherwise when he didn’t. I pushed when I wanted to and let it go when I didn’t. There was no illusion of balance in it.
Only understanding.
The kiss had not been mentioned again.
Not once.
But it hadn’t been ignored either.
It lived in the space between us now, quiet and present, something neither of us tried to define or dismiss. It didn’t press. It didn’t demand. It simply existed, altering the shape of every room we stood in together.
I had stopped pretending not to feel that.
My phone buzzed softly on the counter behind me.
I turned after a moment and picked it up, the motion steady in a way that had taken work to rebuild. Nora’s name lit the screen.
You’ve been quiet.
I leaned back against the counter slightly and typed with one hand.
I’ve been thinking.
The response came slower than usual.
That’s not always a good sign.
A faint breath left me that might have been amusement on another day.
It is this time.
A pause.
Then—
Did you leave?
My gaze flicked toward the hallway before I could stop it.
No.
The reply came quickly.
Then something changed.
I didn’t answer right away.
Because she was right.
Something had.
I just didn’t like how easily she had reached it.
What do you mean by that?
I typed.
The dots appeared. Paused. Then—
You don’t stay somewhere like that without something shifting.
My brow pulled slightly. My grip tightened a fraction.
You keep saying “like that.” What exactly do you think I’m in?
Another pause.
Longer this time.
I think you’re somewhere controlled. Structured. And whoever you’re with isn’t letting anything happen by accident.
I went still.
My gaze lifted slowly from the phone, drifting toward the hallway again, toward the rest of the house, toward the silence that never really meant emptiness here.
That wasn’t a guess.
Not entirely.
You’re making a lot of assumptions,
I sent.
Am I?
My jaw tightened.
You haven’t asked where I am. Or who I’m with.
The response came almost immediately.
Because I don’t think you’d tell me if I did.
Something in me cooled a degree.
Not fear.
Not yet.
Just a kind of awareness that didn’t sit right.
Try me,
I typed.
The dots appeared again. Stayed. Then disappeared.
No response.
I frowned at the screen, my thumb hovering as the silence stretched longer than it should have. Nora didn’t leave things unfinished. She didn’t back off unless the silence itself was doing more for her than another question would.
Another message finally came through.
I don’t need you to say it.
My chest tightened slightly.
Why?
This time the response came slower.
Because I think I already know what matters.
That wasn’t an answer.
That was something else.
I stared at it, my attention sharpening in a way it hadn’t before. Nora had always been perceptive. Quick. Good at listening around things instead of only to them. In a small town, that could look like instinct. Or gossip. Or simple habit.
This didn’t feel like any of those.
Then say it,
I typed.
Another pause.
Then—
You’re not trying to leave.
My grip tightened.
That doesn’t tell you anything.
It tells me enough.
I stared at the screen, something colder slipping under the surface now. Not panic. Not fear. Just the feeling of a conversation changing shape while I was still standing inside it.
About what?
I asked.
The reply came clean.
About him.
I went completely still.
My gaze lifted again, slower this time, my focus pulling away from the phone and into the space around me, like I was suddenly seeing the whole thing from farther out.
From outside.
You don’t even know him,
I typed.
The response came back immediately.
No. But I know you.
That should have been reassuring.
It wasn’t.
My lips pressed together. The unease that had only been threading through the edges of the conversation before started taking clearer shape now. Nora wasn’t asking the wrong questions by accident. She was choosing not to ask certain ones at all.
Then what are you not saying?
I sent.
The dots appeared. Stayed.
Then—
I think you’re closer to something than you realize.
I exhaled slowly, my jaw tightening.
You already said that.
I meant it differently this time.
That didn’t help.
Then explain it,
I typed.
Another pause.
Longer.
Then—
Not over text.
My brow furrowed.
Then how?
The reply came quickly.
When you’re somewhere you can choose what happens next.
I stared at that one longest.
Not because I didn’t understand the words.
Because I did.
And I didn’t like the shape they made.
My attention lifted from the phone again, drifting toward the hallway, toward the rest of the house, toward everything I still didn’t fully understand.
Toward him.
A strange feeling settled in my chest. Not sharp. Not overwhelming. Present enough that I couldn’t dismiss it.
Not about where I was.
About Nora.
I lowered the phone slowly and set it on the counter beside me, but my attention stayed outward, my thoughts no longer as settled as they had been moments before.
The kitchen hadn’t changed. The stone beneath my palms was still cool.
The light through the window still fell the same way across the floor.
Somewhere deeper in the house a door opened and closed, quiet enough that it would have disappeared entirely a week ago.
Now I heard everything.
For the first time, I wasn’t sure Nora was only asking questions.
And I wasn’t sure I liked what that meant.