ログインThe bathroom was bigger than I expected, with a deep tub and a shower, thick white towels folded on a shelf, and a little basket of soaps that smelled like lavender. I turned the water on as hot as it would go and stood under it until my skin turned red and the mud ran off in brown streams down the
Marissa pov The lock clicked, and for the first time in three days I let myself breathe. I stood in the middle of the guest room with Ethan Criss's jacket hanging off my shoulders, dripping rainwater onto a floor that looked far too clean for me. There was a bed with a real quilt, a lamp with a wa
Her lips trembled. For a moment I thought she'd bolt anyway. Then her shoulders crumpled, and a sob she'd clearly been holding for hours broke out of her. She pressed the back of her wrist against her mouth, trying to muffle it, and failed. I didn't move closer. Every instinct I had screamed to
Ethan pov I smelled her before I saw her. Rain had been falling since sunset, the cold, steady kind that soaks through a jacket in minutes, and I was finishing the last stretch of the northern border patrol when a scent cut through the wet pine and mud. It was sweet, like honey and wildflowers,
I felt genuine fear building alongside my continued fury, understanding exactly how thoroughly this situation had escalated beyond anything we'd previously anticipated. "What about the council petition," I asked. "Does this new information change how we need to approach those formal proceedings?"
Ethan pov We made our way toward my father's study that afternoon, the comfortable warmth from our morning together still lingering pleasantly despite the obvious seriousness waiting ahead, but the moment I saw his expression through the half-open door, I felt that lingering comfort drain away ent







