David chuckled, low and smug. “Oh,” he drawled, voice dripping with that mock curiosity that always made me want to hang up on him. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with a certain gorgeous young teacher, would it?”
“Just answer the damn question.”
He laughed softly, and I could picture the grin spreading across his face even through the line. “Christ, Stone,” he said. “You really are in deep this time, aren’t you?”
But I didn’t answer that. Because I already knew the fucking truth.
He chuckled through the line, the sound lazy, dragging, far too casual for the way my blood had started to climb.
“Relax, Stone. It’s the usual mixed bag, students from the upper years, some junior staff, a few of us professors who drew the short straw. It’s meant to be all professional bonding andteam-building, but let’s be honest, it’s mostly students getting drunk in ski jackets.”
I pressed my thumb against my temple, eyes narrowing into the dark of my apartment. “Who approved it?”
“Department head,” he said, unbothered. “You signed off on it too, remember? Back in January.”
The words hit with a dull thud, heavy and cold.
Fuck.
He was right. I had.
But that had been before she’d walked into my orbit, before her voice started haunting the spaces between my thoughts. Back then, she was just another name on a page, another student whose existence didn’t crawl under my skin and twist.
David’s voice came again, faintly amused, the kind of tone that always made me want to smash the phone against the wall. “There’s a full list in the admin portal if you’re that curious. Or you could just admit you’re spiraling over a pretty woman.”
“I’m hanging up now.”
“Of course you are. Don’t forget to pack your jealousy in a thermal bag.”
Click. Silence again.
But it wasn’t calm. It was a raw, pulsing kind of quiet that left no room to breathe. The phone sat heavy in my hand before I dropped it onto the table, the sound echoing through the room. My pulse was a slow hammer against my throat. The lights from the city bled through the window, fractured and distant, but none of it touched the thing gnawing at my chest.
I tried to swallow it down, the irritation, the want, the fucking ache that had no name. But it didn’t fade. It never did.
She was still there. Always there.
The shape of her silhouette at the edge of my thoughts, the echo of her breath against my neck, the goddamn sound of her voice saying my name.
And now she’d be gone for the weekend, buried in snow and laughter, surrounded by people who didn’t understand what it meant to touch something sacred and ruin it anyway. Layers between her and the world. Layers I wanted to tear apart with my teeth just to get to her again.
The thought crawled through me, violent and alive. It wasn’t just jealousy anymore. That was too soft a word. Too fucking small for the thing clawing its way up from the pit of my chest.
No. It was possession, vile and consuming, the kind that burned through reason until nothing was left but the hunger to claim what shouldn’t belong to me. And it was spreading, feeding, turning everything else to ash. By the time I realized my hands were shaking, it was already too late to pretend otherwise.
Chapter Fifteen
Edwina
Morningcreptinbeneaththe weight of snowfall, not gentle but insistent, each flake settling against the glass until the world outside disappeared into pale silence. The light that slipped through the thin crack in the curtains was faint, diffused through frost, turning the room into a blurred painting where edges ceased to exist and everything felt suspended. I blinked toward the ceiling, white, unfamiliar, too clean, and found the sheets twisted around my legs, tangled proof of a night spent fighting sleep.
The air still carried the residue of warmth from the radiator, uneven and restless, the hum of its adjustment blending with the faint sound of wind pressing against the window. Aster’s coat hung half off the chair by the desk, a sleeve brushing the carpet, while the faint smell of cedar and coffee from the lobby seepedthrough the walls. Somewhere down the corridor, laughter drifted, light and careless, the sound of others who didn’t have ghosts riding their shoulders.
The drive here had been long, three hours of winding roads coiling through mountain fog, the tires gripping patches of ice that shone like old glass. Most students had taken the university buses, voices spilling over the hum of engines, all energy and easy noise. Gwen had insisted we take her car, declaring she trusted her driving more than a graduate student with a caffeine addiction behind a wheel. I had agreed, smiled, made jokes about playlists and snacks. But every curve in the road, every hum of the tires against the frozen asphalt, made my fingers tighten in my lap. I hadn’t told them why. They knew only fragments, the part where I didn’t like highways, didn’t like the silence that followed when the radio faltered. Not the rest. Not the memory of metal compressing against metal, the sound of it tearing the world in half, the way time stuttered and folded inward, leaving me gasping between heartbeats.
I sat up, the sheets sliding down my legs, the air biting against bare skin, dry enough to sting. Gwen was gone, her suitcase a forgotten ghost by the door before she’d vanished into Zayn’s room with a laugh that still seemed to echo faintly through the lodge halls. Aster was asleep still, her curls spilling over her pillow, one arm hanging off the bed, mumbling into her dreams, untouched by the weight that seemed to anchor me. I listened to her breathing, slow, even. A small part of me envied it.
The lodge—Silver Hollow—was everything it promised to be in the brochure, exposed beams, glass windows that framed the slopes beyond, a fireplace flickering somewhere down the hall. Every detail meant to soothe, to distract, to convince you that life could be simple if you just stayed still long enough.
