Chapter Four

Lily’s POV

I stayed away for two full days.

The decision felt clean in the morning light of the first day and steadily less convincing as the hours wore on. I threw myself into ordinary tasks emails, errands, the careful performance of a life that did not revolve around an executive floor after dark but Thomas’s voice followed me through all of it. The memory of being backed against the bookshelf, the quiet precision of his words, the way my body had betrayed me while I stood there furious and wet, replayed without mercy. By the second evening the resolve had thinned to a fragile, transparent thing.

I...