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She jerks toward me.

For one second, her eyes go wide with panic.

She darts her gaze past me to the corridor behind her, and then to my face, her lips trembling.

I should ask what she’s doing here.

Instead, I cross the distance between us and take her face in my hands.

Her breath catches. “Nathaniel⁠—”

The sound of my name in her mouth destroys me.

I wrap one arm around her waist, pull her against me, and kiss her.

Not gently.

33

ELLA

For one dangerous second, I let myself stay there. In his arms.

Then I remember the first time he touched me.

The second.

The way he kissed me as if he couldn’t breathe without my mouth and then vanished like I was nothing.

I pull my hand out of his.

“What?” he whispers.

I fold my arms over my chest, because otherwise I may do something ridiculous like reach for him again. “You’re just going to use me again and then disappear.”

“I’m not going to disappear.”

“You already have.”

Nathaniel glances toward the far end of the corridor. His father’s bust stands only a few feet from us. The sight of it makes my stomach turn.

Behind it tucked into the narrow gap is the phone. I slipped it back in right before Nathaniel rounded the corner and kissed the sense out of me.

Almost.

Not all of it.

“I don’t want to use you,” Nathaniel says. His voice is lower now. Rougher. He drags a hand through his hair, and for once he looks less like a Vexley heir and more like a man who hasn’t slept in a long time. “I don’t want to do that,” he says again. “I don’t want to touch you and then retreat into whatever this house made me. I don’t want to keep making the same mistake.”

I swallow.

“But I do need your help,” he adds.

“I can’t imagine what kind of help I could give you.”

“More than you realize,” he says. “You work here. In the shadows. The help sees more than anyone else in a house like this.”

I wince at the word “help,” but that is what I am. I can’t deny it, and I can’t expect him to.