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I wait for him to close the distance. We both know he wants this; we both know I do, too.

So what’s the hold-up?

It’s not as if he thinks I’ll turn him down. Even if I wanted to, I can’t, and even I could, I wouldn’t. I’ll say yes. God help me, I’ll say yes to whatever he asks.

He’s close. Huge. Fragrant. Oceans, dust, spearmint, crushed grapes, smoke and roasted chicken and the musk of a man who’s larger than life. I’m on my tiptoes, I realize, completely by accident. I’m straining up to reach him and he’s leaning down toward me and that hand on my hip has curled into a claw dragging me closer, and our bodies are flush together, lined uphead to toe, I’m a tiny thing in his massive arms, I’m his, I’m his, I’m?—

“You should go to bed, Rae.”

I blink. “… What?”

His face looks pained. Almost agonized, really. As if something is shredding him from the inside out.

“Go,” he snarls. “While I’m still letting you.”

I don’t move. I can’t. My feet have fused to the old stone floor, and my brain is having the damndest time trying to process the whiplash ofthis.

“Lukas—”

“I saidgo!”

The roar reverberates off the cellar walls, bouncing between the stone archways until it sounds like a hundred versions of him are screaming at once. The bottles rattle in their racks. A fine mist of dust drifts down from the ceiling.

So I run.

33

RAE

INTERNAL MEMO - PERSONAL BOUNDARIES DIVISION

Please be advised that all safety protocols have been compromised. The barrier between right and wrong has been reduced to a single brass handle.

Collapse is imminent.

Beware.

I go back to my room, but I don’t sleep.

Not that I expected to, really. Between the seven-hour unplug I took this afternoon and the jet lag scrambling my circadian rhythm, my body has no idea what time zone it’s supposed to be operating in.

But it’s not just the temporal confusion keeping me awake.

It’s the door, too.

The unlocked bathroom door, specifically, which I can see from my position in this four-poster bed if I turn my head just slightly to the left. Moonlight seeps through the tall windows and castsa pale stripe across the floorboards, ending right at that brass handle.

The handle that doesn’t lock.

The handle that connects my room to his.

I lie on my back, staring at the ceiling, listening to the old house settle around me. Every creak makes my heart stutter. The wind rattles the window panes, and somewhere not too far away, a shutter bangs against stone.

He’s not coming,I scold myself.He told you to run. He practically threw you out of the cellar.

But the door stays unlocked.

And I stay awake.