Semua Bab Love And Lies: short stories : Bab 31 - Bab 33

The creak came again. Closer this time.Gavriel moved without a sound, gun raised, body angled between me and the dark hallway. "Stay here. Do not move."I didn't argue. Couldn't, really my legs had gone numb with fear the second I heard it the first time.He cleared the hallway in slow, deliberate steps, checking each doorway before he moved past it. Evelyn stood frozen by the counter, pulse hammering so hard she could feel it in her throat, straining to hear anything over the blood rushing in her ears.Three minutes felt like thirty before he came back, gun lowered, shoulders only slightly less rigid than before."Raccoon," he said. "Knocked something off the back porch. Tripped the motion sensor."The relief hit her so hard her knees actually buckled. He caught her before she hit the floor, arm wrapping tight around her waist, and for a second neither of them said anything at all."I thought—" Her voice cracked. "I actually thought—""I know." His hand came up to the back of her

I had almost said no to the alumni event three separate times."You have to come," the department head had insisted over the phone. "The career panel needs someone from the humanities side, and the students always love hearing from you specifically. You made an impression, Marianne."I hadn't expected that impression to still be walking around campus eight years later, looking nothing like the boy I remembered."Ms. Calloway." Julian's voice hadn't changed, even if everything else about him had — broader now, more sure of himself, nothing left of the gangly seventeen-year-old who used to sit in the back of my literature class pretending not to care about the material. "I wondered if you'd still be teaching here.""Guest lecturing, actually." I smoothed my blazer, grateful for the excuse to look anywhere but directly at him. "They asked a few of us back for the career panel. What about you? I don't remember seeing your name on any program.""I'm not a speaker. Just an alum with a nice