Page 136
We listen to Baryn’s podcast together on Saturdays now. He’s pivoted to cold cases in obscure cities, and we’ve somehow ended up on friendly enough terms to text him our theories in between episodes.
It helped, I think, when he finally admitted to Theo that he never had a thing for me. He just enjoys pissing people off for sport, and Theo was an easy, entertaining target.
Victoria’s death was ruled an accident.
Cause of death: asphyxiation. Contributing factor: autoerotic misadventure.
Giles said it best: a fittingly humiliating end.
It took some pulling strings and a far-from-legal-rewriting of reports, but Baryn is well versed in that kind of thing, and money talks.
There’s no more open investigation. No manhunt. No trial.
Just a quiet consensus that the whole thing was tragic and strange and deeply embarrassing for everyone involved.
I haven’t been back to the manor, but Emily texts me near constantly. Usually pictures of the horses. Once, a jar of herb-infused honey. I still haven’t decided if that one was a threat or a joke.
Everything with the Mayfair family feels like unfamiliar territory on the other side of all this. I take it day by day, grateful for how easy it’s been, considering how unexpected—and how new—it is to navigate fragile relationships in the aftermath of something so completely chaotic.
But this—
This is familiar.
Theo’s office is tucked into the far corner of campus. I’ll find him sitting behind the same spotless desk, shelves lined in neat, meticulous rows. Zero personality, no warmth. Nothing like the man who works here.
I knock once and don’t wait for a response before I open the door.
He’s at his desk, reading glasses perched on the end of his nose, sleeves rolled, brow furrowed.
He doesn’t look up.
“You’re late,” he clicks his pen and smacks it down onto his desk.
I close the door behind me. “You’re insufferable.”
“You’re obsessed with me.”
“You’re in love with me.”
He lifts his eyes to mine, warmth spreading across his features. “Obviously.”
I cross the room in three steps, slide into his lap.
There’s something so easy in the way I fit against him now—like muscle memory. All those weeks of navigating grief and fallout and whatever this thing between us is—was—has become—have worn down every last excuse I had not to let it in.
He pulls my face to his, and then I say it, right there, in the breath between kisses. “I love you.”
His fingers flex once at my waist. His mouth stills against mine for a half-second, and then he pulls back just enough to look at me.
“I love you, too.”
It doesn’t feel rushed. It doesn’t feel overdue.
It feels inevitable.
He lifts me onto the desk, scattering papers.
Professionalism? Never heard of her.
