The weight of it pressed against her chest, compressing lungs that had forgotten how to function. He stood before her, disheveled and unguarded, offering everything she had not known she wanted.
Alice felt the walls around her heartbegin to crack.
But cracks were dangerous.
Cracks let in light.
And light illuminated everything one preferred to keep hidden.
The distance between them seemed to pulse with its own heartbeat—two feet, perhaps three—the width of a world that had suddenly contracted to the space between his reaching hand and her retreating form. Apple blossoms drifted like snow falling out of season, pale petals catching the slanting light and making it all look almost sacred.
Samuel stepped forward.
Alice watched him close the distance she had created, watched his hand rise toward hers with the deliberate intent of a man determined to reach across an abyss. His fingers extended, trembling slightly. She could see it now, that tremor, his control finally slipping.
He paused.
Inches from her hand, he paused. Close enough that she could feel warmth radiating from his skin, close enough that the air between them vibrated with everything left unsaid. His gray eyes held hers with an intensity that made her want to look away while making it impossible to do so.
“I have spent years building walls,” he whispered,voice raw with confession, “only to find you have slipped through every crack.”
Alice’s breath shortened.
Panic flooded her chest, constricting her lungs and sending her heart hammering against her ribs. She felt her pulse in her temples, in her throat, in the tips of her fingers, which began to tremble in answer to his.
Every crack.
She thought of her mother.
The memory surfaced unbidden, heavy with a childhood spent watching someone disappear. Her mother had been brilliant—quick-witted, passionate, alive in ways that brightened rooms. Alice remembered laughter echoing through their London townhouse, clever observations captivating dinner guests, a woman with opinions about everything and the wit to defend them.
Then she remembered watching that brightness fade.
Year by year.
Piece by piece.
Her mother had loved her father with the totality society prescribed for wives, surrendering to the marriage as duty demanded. Her father, taught that wives were possessions, accepted that surrender andexpected more.
Always more.
Until there was nothing left to give, and nothing left of the woman who had once given it.
I watched her disappear.
The words Alice had spoken on a different day echoed in her mind, a warning she had failed to heed. She had sworn never to become that woman, never to love so completely that she lost herself, never to give so much that nothing remained when it was done.
And yet.
The library.
Firelight.
His hands exploring the landscape of her body with methodical intensity.
She had given herself to him completely, surrendering defenses she had spent years constructing, allowing him to see her in ways she had never permitted anyone else.
She had already begun to disappear.
