OFF LIMITS のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 1 - チャプター 10

CHAPTER TWO POV: Zara She heard him before she saw him. The kitchen. Early. The sound of a pan hitting the stove and then his voice, low and rough the way it always was before he’d fully woken up, humming something she didn’t recognize. Zara lay in bed and stared at the ceiling and did not move. Outside the window, the world had disappeared. Completely. Overnight the snow had swallowed everything, the yard, the fence, the road, the neighbor’s red car that was usually visible from her window. Gone. Just white, unbroken and deep and still falling. Her phone had one bar. She’d already tried Ryan. Straight to voicemail. Marcus’s text from last night sat at the top of her screen. Roads are closed, stuck at Dad’s, don’t burn the house down, back as soon as I can. Followed by three laughing emojis like this was funny. This was not funny. She sat up. Pulled her hair into something that wasn’t quite a bun. Looked down at what she was wearing, oversized sleep shirt, no bra, sh

CHAPTER FOURPOV: ZaraDon’t.She replayed it all night.Not the word itself. The way he’d said it. Like he was talking to himself as much as her. Like it cost him something to get it out. She’d gone to bed at ten, stared at the ceiling until two, and woken up at seven feeling like she hadn’t slept at all.The unknown number hadn’t texted again.She almost wished it had.At least then she’d have something concrete to be upset about instead of this, whatever this was. This low hum. This awareness that had settled under her skin like a second heartbeat she hadn’t asked for.She picked up her phone. Tried Ryan again.It rang four times and then ”Babe. Hey. Sorry, signal’s been terrible up here.”His voice was warm and familiar and she held onto it like a rope. “Hey. I’ve been trying to reach you.”“I know, I’m sorry. How’s it there? Still snowing?”“Yeah. Roads are still closed.”“You doing okay alone?”She paused. One second. “Damon’s here. Marcus got stuck at your dad’s before the stor

CHAPTER SIXPOV: ZaraShe woke up in his bed.Not tangled. Not dramatic. Just…. there. His arm loose around her waist, her back against his chest, both of them still fully clothed like that made it better. Like the hoodie and the sweatpants were some kind of defence against what had already happened.They weren’t.She lay there and didn’t move and listened to him breathe and thought about Ryan.Ryan who texted good morning every single day without fail. Ryan who remembered she hated mushrooms and picked them out of things before she even noticed. Ryan who had never once given her a reason not to trust him.Her eyes burned.She didn’t cry. She pressed her lips together and stared at the wall and felt the weight of Damon’s arm and the warmth of him at her back and hated herself quietly and thoroughly.She needed to get up.She didn’t move.He woke up slowly. She felt it, the shift in his breathing, the slight tension that moved through him the second consciousness hit and he remembered

CHAPTER EIGHTPOV: ZaraMorning came too fast.She heard Ryan before her eyes opened. His voice downstairs, easy and unhurried, talking to someone. A second voice answered and her stomach dropped before she was fully awake.Damon.The two of them. Downstairs. Together.She lay completely still and stared at the ceiling and ran through every possible version of getting through this day without everything falling apart. She came up with nothing convincing.She got up. Washed her face. Looked at herself in the mirror longer than was useful.Her lips were slightly swollen. She pressed two fingers against them and then turned away from the mirror before she could think about why.The kitchen was full in a way it hadn’t been all weekend.Ryan at the island with coffee. Damon at the stove. Camille at the table scrolling her phone, legs crossed, reading glasses on, unbothered and beautiful and completely unaware.Three people she was lying to simultaneously.Zara walked in and smiled and it f

CHAPTER TENPOV: MarcusHe’d looked at it four times.Four times thinking his eyes were wrong. That the light was bad. That it was a mistake or a trick or something with an explanation that made sense because the alternative, the thing the image was actually showing him, wasn’t possible.It was possible.He knew his sister’s room. He’d painted those walls himself when she was sixteen and insisted on burgundy and their mum had said absolutely not and Marcus had done it anyway because he could never say no to her. He knew that window. That curtain. That specific quality of dark.He knew Damon’s back. His build. The tattoo on his left shoulder.He knew exactly what he was looking at.His phone was in his hand and Camille was in the kitchen twenty feet away washing up and humming to herself and he was standing in the hallway of his own house holding evidence that his best friend and his little sister had—He called Zara.She answered on the fifth ring.He heard the car. Ryan’s car. Ryan w