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It looks like she’s holding a book open and it hasn’t moved to turn a page since I glanced in.

She’s just standing there staring out the window.

My eyes trail over the rest of her.

She’s in a soft gray sweater and leggings.

Her hair is pulled back in a loose braid down her spine, a few pieces coming out of it at the base of her neck, and I feel my fingers twitch. I want to walk over there, pull that braid loose, and run my hand through her hair. The feeling is so strong I have to shove both hands in my pockets to prevent myself from doing something fucking stupid.

Suddenly, she stiffens and she slowly turns around. Her eyes widen when she sees it’s me and I can tell that she has barely slept.

The dark circles under her eyes are more pronounced and her face is sallow.

Her lips look chapped, like she’s been chewing on them, and her hair is not quite as neat as it looked from behind.

The loose braid is fraying at the crown, like she plaited it hours ago and hasn’t bothered to fix it since.

She looks…haggard. She looks that way because of me.

Because early this morning, we had sex and she regretted it the second it was over.

She has clearly spent all day beating herself up about it. And it’s my fault.

Any other morning it would gut me.

But this morning I have Dino’s blood on my hands and I can’t afford to let her see me right now.

Her lips part as if she’s about to say something.

I don’t let her.

With Herculean strength, I tear my eyes from her and keep walking.

I don’t stop until I’m in my study with the door shut behind me.

Even then I stand there with my forehead against the wood for a long time before I can make myself move.

It’s killing me to walk away from her looking like that. It really is.

But the thirty days I promised her are about to get a lot more complicated than either of us signed up for.

9

KATERINA

I wake up and I feel sick.

Not hangover sick. Not flu sick. Something worse than that.

It’s a full-body, bone-deep, wrong-in-the-world kind of sick, the kind you feel when you have done something you cannot take back and your body knew before you did.

I lie bed with my eyes closed and it takes me a few moments to remember why I feel like this.

Then I remember and I bolt upright, clamping a hand over my mouth.

Oh my god. Oh my god.

I slept with him.