เข้าสู่ระบบI don't know how long I stayed like that, curled up and my face swollen against the pillow, but at some point the crying just... stopped. My body probably ran out of whatever it needed to keep that going. So I lay there staring at the wall, empty in a way that almost scared me more than the crying had. After a while, I heard footsteps outside, then a gentle, almost apologetic knock came. "Sara?" Riley's voice, muffled through the door. "It's me." I didn't answer right away. Not that I had anything against her. I just wasn't sure I trusted my voice yet, wasn't sure if it would come out steady or if it would crack the second I opened my mouth. Didn’t want to take the gamble. "I'm coming in, okay?" The door creaked open, and I heard her pause in the doorway, probably taking in the state of me, still in my shoes. "Have you been crying?" I forced my mouth into something that would resemble a smile, even though I could feel how wrong it must have looked, all wobbly at the edges
SARAPHINA °❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:・Riley told me Noah was alive, and I didn’t even pause to weigh the words or decide if I actually believed her. Before my mind could process anything, my body was already moving the very next day, driving straight back to Celeste’s mansion.Getting there wasn’t easy though.Not with how intense my parents had been, watching me like I’d break if they blinked wrong. Which, okay, wasn't entirely wrong.Still, I waited for the house to go quiet, pretended I was just heading downstairs, and slipped out the door. By the time they’d realize my room was empty, I was miles away in a car they couldn't track. I stared at the passing trees, half-expecting to spot the clearing burned into my memory, and didn't bother texting them until I arrived.Honestly, they might have let me go if I’d just asked them, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to speak to them. Especially my mother. I was still trying to scrub that night from my memory, to forget everything she told me about Noah.What sh
There was a sound on the other end that wasn’t quite a sob but wasn’t far off it either, shaky and wet, like she’d been crying before she even fucking called and just hadn’t let it all the way out yet. “Okay,” she mumbled, and then again, softer, like she was trying to convince her own body of it. “Okay.”“He’s still unconscious,” I said gently, because I didn’t want her building something in her head that wasn’t there yet. “But stable’s stable. That’s the part that matters right now.”“I know. I know, I just—” She cut herself off, and I heard her breathe in hard through her nose. “I’ve been so worried.”“I know.”“Nobody was telling me anything and every time I called Mr. James it went to voicemail, and I just—” Her voice wobbled again, and this time she let it, a small shaky laugh coming out somewhere under the tears. “God, sorry, I’m being so embarrassing right now.”“You’re not.”“I’m ugly crying into my phone.”“I can’t see you,” I said. “So as far as I’m concerned you’re doing t
James woke up slowly, and I felt the shift in his breathing before I saw it, then the weight of him going from dead-heavy to something more aware, muscles coming back one by one against my shoulder.He blinked at the garden like he didn’t recognize it.“Did I—” He stopped, lifted his head, and looked at me with confusion. “How long was I out?”“About an hour.”He stared at me like I’d said something absurd. “An hour.”“Yeah.”“You’ve been sitting here for an hour.”“That’s generally how it works when someone falls asleep on you.” I immediately wanted to take it back, because his face instantly turned apologetic.“Sorry,” he muttered, straightening up, rolling his shoulder like he could feel the absence of where he’d been leaning. “I must have been heavy.”He had been. My arm had gone numb somewhere around the forty-minute mark and my neck was going to hate me tomorrow, and there was a damp patch on my shoulder where his mouth had been slightly open against my shirt, which I was absol
It did not take long to realize he had actually fallen asleep because his breathing grew heavy against my collarbone. I sat there listening to it when a stupid curiosity crossed my mind. Before I knew it, I raised my hand—slowly enough that I could have stopped if I had any sense left—and touched his hair.It was… soft.Softer than I expected, finer than a man that hard had any right to have, and the ridiculous softness of it made my throat tight because this was James, the same bastard who had tied me to a chair and chased me through the woods, and here I was sinking my hand into his hair. It was a miracle that didn’t wake him.There wasn’t even a twitch. Just goes to show how fucking exhausted he was that my fingers in his hair meant nothing next to the need to sleep, and a smile found its way onto my lips before I could stop it. Then I noticed a crawl at the back of my neck.I raised my gaze toward the house and found Celeste standing in front of it, framed by the doorway like
I held the glass out and he took it without looking at me at first, his fingers damp from the condensation.“Thank you,” he mumbled as he drank, throat working, eyes still on the garden while I sat down beside him.For a while neither of us said anything. Probably because there’s too much to say than there isn’t anything to say.James held the glass against his knee and let out a short breath that almost counted as a laugh. "If Noah could see the state of this garden," he murmured, his eyes still fixed on the overgrown beds, "he would be absolutely furious."The laugh that followed was rough and tired, and there wasn’t much humor in it. I followed his gaze and looked at the garden too, at the places where the soil had dried and the blooms had started to go messy at the edges, and I could almost see Noah standing there, pissed off at the neglect. “Yeah,” I breathed out. “He would lose his shit.”A faint twitch tugged at James’s mouth as he rotated the glass between his fingers.I gla







