Chapter 3

Ian drifted through the entire day at the construction site like a ghost. He zoned out three times while squatting by the scaffolding studying the blueprints, and it took the project manager repeating his name a couple times to drag him back.

"Ian, double-check the opening in this load-bearing wall. Ian? Ian Sutherland!"

"Huh? Oh, okay. Let me see."

He lowered his head and stared at the blueprints, but all he could see in his mind was that scene from the morning—that back and those narrow shoulders under her shirt.

"Did you sleepwalk your way through all four years of undergrad, Emily?"

Cynthia had always been patient with everyone, except people who were careless. In her book, it was okay to be slow, but not okay to be sloppy.

Emily was no dunce, but she was careless.

Ian remembered when he'd messed up the section size of a beam on a project in his junior year. He'd written 205 instead of 250.

Cynthia happened to walk by and glance at his drawings. She'd rolled her eyes and said, "Serves you right if you fail this class."

Then, she sat down and helped him fix it, number by number. When she finished, she glared at him. "If you mess this up again, I'm done bailing you out."

The next day, she came back and checked everything for him all over again.

Ian snapped out of his memories and pushed his hard hat lower, shading his eyes.

By the time he got home from work, it was 7:30 pm. Emily was curled up on the couch scrolling on her phone. When she heard the door, she looked up and eyed Ian like he was an alien.

"Ian."

"Yeah."

"What did you put in that soup?"

Ian's hands paused over his shoes. "Pork and parsnips."

"I'm not asking about the ingredients!" Emily shot up from the couch and marched over to him. "You know what? After Professor Lynch drank your soup, she didn't tell anyone off all afternoon. Not a single person!"

She stuck up a finger to stress just how impossible that was. "She spent the whole afternoon sitting by the window, doing absolutely nothing. No edits, no papers, no reading. She just sat there, holding that flask, taking one spoonful at a time. I walked past her office three times. All three times, she was just spacing out. And the last time…"

Emily suddenly lowered her voice. "The last time, I saw her wiping her eyes with the back of her hand."

This time, Ian froze in the middle of untying his shoelaces. He stayed bent over like that for a full five seconds.

"The devil incarnate, crying," Emily muttered. "It was terrifying. I didn't even dare go in. I felt like if she caught me watching, she'd treat me as a witness to her crime and kill me…"

Ian straightened up, brushed past her into the kitchen, and turned on the faucet. Water splashed into the sink.

Cynthia had recognized the soup. He'd known she would.

Leaving garlic and onions out of a pork and parsnip soup wasn't some kind of secret recipe, but it was what she liked. Sure, there were probably many others out there who made the soup without garlic.

But pork and parsnip soup with no garlic, half a spoon of cooking wine, and a handful of wolfberries tossed in at the end—that was something he'd figured out on his own. It was all because she'd once said the wolfberries were sweet and took the greasy edge off the pork.

It had been three years.

Ian thought he'd long scrubbed all those details from his memory, but this morning, his hands had moved faster than his brain. He'd just grabbed the wolfberries and thrown them in. His muscle memory was more honest than he was.

"From now on, keep your nose out of your advisor's personal business," he said.

Emily protested, "It's not like I stuck it in in the first place! I just casually—"

"Just focus on your own stuff," Ian said curtly.

Something about his tone wasn't right. Emily picked up on that, but she didn't dwell on it. Ian had always been the gruff, silent type.

Ian shut himself in his room.

As soon as the door closed, he leaned back against it, pressing the back of his head to the wood. He shut his eyes. Out of nowhere, the memories from three years ago started playing in his head like a film reel.

In the second semester of his senior year, his mother had been diagnosed with a tumor and needed surgery. The bill had come to 120,000 dollars. Even after scraping together every cent they had, they'd still been 40,000 dollars short.

He'd spent three days running around trying to borrow the rest, but no one had come through. His mouth had broken out in cold sores from the stress.

Then, the hospital had suddenly called to say that the full amount had been paid. He kept asking who had covered it, but no one at the hospital would tell him.

It wasn't until he returned to campus that someone finally said the money had come from Micah Webster, a guy in his major.

That person said, "Micah's been into your girlfriend forever. The whole department knows it. You're the only one who doesn't."

Ian stood there, clutching the receipt, his ears ringing. He never went to ask Cynthia about it, mainly because he didn't have the guts to.

If she said it was true, he wouldn't be able to live with it. If she said it was false, he'd feel even more pathetic. He couldn't protect his own girlfriend or pay for his mother's surgery. He'd had to let some other guy swoop in and play savior.

The shame and panic had crushed him, so he'd chosen the dumbest way out. He'd changed his number, deleted all of his social media accounts, and just vanished without a word.

A month later, he was sweating it out on a construction site in another city, with screenshots on his phone of over a hundred missed calls from Cynthia. He'd saved them from his old number before canceling the number. He hadn't answered or called her back even once, though.

Looking back now, Ian knew he'd made the worst possible choice.

But what was done was done. Cynthia was doing great now. She was a rising star in the world of academia with a bright future ahead of her. He had no reason, and no right, to waltz back into her life.

He dug out an old phone charger from the closet, then shoved it back in again. It was just a charging cable. It didn't prove anything.

He finally made up his mind—from now on, under no circumstances could Cynthia find out that he and Emily were siblings. From here on out, everything would be done remotely, whether it was dropping things off or picking Emily up from campus. He wouldn't go anywhere near the humanities building.

Ian spent ten minutes mapping out the plan in his head, making sure there were no loose ends. He even placed an order for the things he needed online.

Right then, Emily started pounding on his door like the place was on fire. When Ian opened it, she barreled in and shoved her phone in his face, looking utterly bewildered. "Ian."

"What now?"

"This is seriously weird. Why is the devil incarnate asking me this?"

She thrust the phone even closer to Ian.

On the screen was a pinned WhatsApp chat. The contact name at the top read, "The Devil Incarnate." The latest message had come in three minutes ago.

It was simple. "Emily, ask your brother something for me. Has he always skipped the garlic when making this soup?"