All Chapters of Lessons After Dark: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

Lena arrives fifteen minutes early. She always does. It’s half discipline, half armor — if she can get into the room before anybody else, maybe she can sneak a breath before everyone else sees her trembling. Perhaps she can grasp some control of it before the world asks too much of her.She's not as dependent on the buffer as she is here, but she may still need it later on.But tonight she’s been a throb under the skin all day. A mild, electric hum that is always present. It started in the shower and never stopped. It was with her at lunch, buzzing along her chest while she graded essays, her red pen missing errors no more than it caught. It followed her here, into this tired room with its soft hum of fluorescent lights and paint-chipped desks.She’s just getting started straightening up a heap of papers when she hears it: those boots once more.Not the latecomer lazy dawdle. Nothing is as octopus-quick and guilt-ridden as a student trying to impress her. These are slower. Heavier. Me

She turned into the classroom, and all the lights came on, the sound of them buzzing louder than her footfalls on the tiles—click-click-click—a steady beat that was neither random nor reassuring, and she didn't trust it. Her black dress pants, which were basically yoga pants, clung to her hips more closely than she usually allowed, the tiniest of rebellions she had yet to acknowledge. It wasn't a particularly special day — at least not on the surface — but underneath the fitted cardigan, the satin camisole sighed beneath her fingertips. It was soft in a sound-on-purpose way. Luxurious. Almost indecent. She convinced herself that it was stability she was after and not the high of attention. Not heat. The fabric spoke differently still, sliding over her curves as if they had whispered it a secret that only she knew of.It was the Mollye one she hadn’t worn the year before. The one she had sworn wasn’t for anyone. Especially not for him.She had more hair than ever, in gentle waves down

The weekend was an avalanche she did not want to outrun.Lena did everything she could think of — scrubbed, for instance, counters that were merely clean, folded laundry so perfectly it might have met military standards — and then walked round and round the block, her earbuds in but no music on, for hours at a time. It didn’t matter. She couldn’t quiet the hum under her skin. Jace’s voice wouldn’t leave her. The weight of his eyes. The note. The box.That damn box.Yet still sitting in the drawer, unopened.Well—except once. Saturday night, after a third glass of wine and soaking in the bath, she had removed it. Only to see the charge, she told herself. If for no other reason than to ensure it still worked.She hadn’t turned it on.Not even once.But she had planted her thumb against the smooth surface. Had shut her eyes and pictured how that would be. How would he feel? And then she had pushed it back in the drawer, as if it had scorched her.On Sunday night, he came to her in a drea

It wasn’t supposed to rain. At least the weather forecast called for a clear sky.Not that anyone was checking. The drinks had taken care of that — one bleeding into the next until the concept of time seemed as irrelevant as the tides. Among the dinner guests, it was approaching 10 p.m., and the group had already been sitting for a long time after dessert was served, slouched in their chairs, their voices heightened by the buzz. Someone played a karaoke version of ‘Drunk in Love’ via their phone, and the table gave an irreverent but hilarious chorus.” Brie accidentally poured half a “Red Flag” cocktail on her lap and denounced gravity as “sexist,” then spontaneously toasted to “messy women with clean intentions.”Even Jace had laughed then—thrown his head back, unselfconscious, profile burnished gold by the flickering, yellow light. Lena tried not to stare. Attempted to overlook the fact that his gaze returned to hers again and again, the tiny quirk of his lips whenever their knees br

Lena awoke to the mean, throbbing thud of a hangover knitting itself up around the back of her head. Her tongue was dry, and her body heavy, and the room too still. She fumbled for the sheet and pulled it over her naked chest, and then squinted open one eye.Sunlight knifed through the crack in the blackout curtains, hot and too bright. She cringed and nuzzled her face into the pillow, where it still faintly smelled of him—saltwater and skin and something that was far too intimate for a guy she'd barely met.Her thighs ached. Her lower back was buzzing with the cramp of the sort that she hadn’t had in … God. A long time. It wasn’t pain exactly. It was the aftermath.Slowly, she sat up, tightening the sheet around her, though there was no one to see. Not anymore. The suite was too quiet — as if it should have been echoing with laughter or morning breath apologies or the sound of a man, still sleeping, stirring beside her.But Jace was gone.Her heart gave the merest hiccup of puzzlemen