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Warm, like the peridot-green eyes of that man who had played a double game with me without even knowing it.

Again, I pressed my lips together until they hurt, did the same with my eyes until I had to gasp for air.

I wanted to be strong, was strong out there, but when I sat here on my bed in this room, I broke down. And all because of a man.

How could I have been so blind? How could I not have seen that this man was hiding behind Erik? How could he not have noticed until now?

I generally had a hard time matching voices to faces, but him too? What kind of coincidence was that?

How was fate able to humiliate me, to destroy me like that?

I had feelings. For my professor.

I had had sex. With my professor.

I was pregnant. By my professor.

No. No, no, no, no, no!

I had feelings. For Erik.

I had had sex. With Erik.

I was pregnant. By Erik.

The sudden sob startled me, so I had to press a hand over my lips to avoid getting Grace or Ivy's attention, as both had their rooms on the same floor next to mine.

My lips were chapped, my hands cold.

I sobbed quietly. Five minutes. Ten…

Three weeks hadn't been enough to process all the confusion, to sort out the chaos inside me.

It was as if I was gradually distancing myself from Erik, no longer seeing him as my best friend, not as the man for whom my cold heart made an exception and spun out of control.

It felt like betrayal, but whenever I wanted to blame him, I came to the same conclusion: He was clueless, knew nothing about my true identity, and he had feelings for a walking lie.

My professor had feelings for me, unaware that J was the girl he actually despised deeply.

Pain. That was the only word that came even vaguely close to describing the tangled web inside my chest. But it was pointless to try to put it into words. Words had never managed to describe what was going on inside me, what I was experiencing.

I was experiencing too much, unfiltered. And everything I had experienced in the last few months had piled up into an unprocessed mountain of impressions.

Erik had been the only one who had been able to reach me with words. But Erik was no longer there.

The moment Professor Tiberius had returned my bracelet to me, he had shattered the beautiful image I had preserved of Erik. And so had the dark image with the thousand edges that I used to have of my professor. Two extremes that now threatened to collide with each other, but were never allowed to.

I had wanted to repress it, to forget that he had given me the bracelet, to really erase it from my mind. Unsuccessfully.

Time heals all wounds. That was the biggest lie I had ever heard. The scars on my arm were proof of that. They had kept reopening over the past three weeks.

I swallowed when I remembered that I had another problem: The internship would start in a few days. And I had made a deal with him.

“I can't do this,” I whispered quietly and opened my eyes, wiping the tears from my face while looking at Buddy, who tilted his head. “I can't go there. I just can't…”

Panic spread through me. But I couldn't take any Salma right now. I didn't have much of it, had just gotten a new box from Rebecca at the Council Hall that evening. But not enough.

Buddy laid his head on my thigh and only looked up at me with his eyes, as he always did when he had done something that made Grace angry.