He’s different when he sleeps.
Younger. Softer.
Less like someone who could hurt me and more like someone I could understand if I tried.
I’ve spent months trying to get close to him. Now I am, and I don’t know what to do with it. What to say. I thought once I got here, I’d have answers. Instead, I have more questions than I started with.
Why he brought me here, took care of me. I don’t think he does anything without a reason.
I keep thinking about you. About how you’d tell me to be careful. To let it go. You always knew when to stop.
I can’t.
Things that used to scare me don’t anymore.
Being here. With him.
It feels right.
Love always,
Becky
P.S. Don’t worry. I’ll flush this down the toilet now. I had to tell you. I always do.
Chapter thirteen
Dramatic
Carrson
Becky’s asleep in my bed.
The thought hits me as strange, like it belongs to someone else. For a full minute, I stand there, watching her, half expecting the situation to correct itself. For me to blink and she’ll be gone, and this will go back to making sense.
Nothinghappens.
She’s still there.
Curled on her side, swallowed by sheets that don’t belong to her, wearing my favorite sleep shirt. The extra soft one. The room is silent in a way it hasn’t been in days, the kind of quiet that follows disruption. Even in sleep, she’s not entirely at peace. There’s a faint tension in her brow. Like whatever drives her hasn’t let go just because her body finally did.
I exhale through my nose.
This isn’t a problem I had planned for.
I reach for the notepad on my desk and tear off a sheet, jotting down a quick note before setting it on the nightstand where she’ll see it if she wakes. It’s a practical thing. Necessary.
I don’t linger after that.
I grab my jacket and step out through the back doors of Ashford House, letting them shut quietly behind me. The air outside is cool, carrying the faint scent of chlorine from the pool and damp grass, thick with that heavy, humid, Southern stillness. The yard stretches wide between the fraternity and the sorority, less a backyard than a private courtyard with its manicured lawn.
Ashford House looms behind me, all tall columns and straight lines, its peaked windows dim at this hour. Across the yard, Rosewood Hall rises in contrast, lighter, more graceful, its French doors and ivy-covered brick softening the structure without making it any less imposing.
Rosewood’s front entrance faces the opposite side, tucked under a wide porch framed with carved railings and climbing roses that have been pruned back for winter, their branches bare and tipped with thorns. I take the steps two at a time and reach for the brass knocker fixed to the center of the door, shaped like a rose, its edges worn smooth from years of use.
I bring it down three times.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
