My hands wouldn’t stop shaking on the steering wheel. I drove for what felt like hours, circling the neighborhood, then heading out toward the quieter roads near the river where the summer traffic thinned out. Sophia’s face kept flashing in my mind — the rage in her eyes, the way her nails had scraped my car window like she wanted to claw through it and into me. *I promise you, I won’t spare you.*
The words sat heavy in my stomach, mixing with the guilt that had been festering since Damien first kissed me in the foyer. What the hell was I doing? This wasn’t some harmless summer fling. This was my mother’s marriage. My family. The only stable thing I had left after my dad bailed when I was twelve. And here I was, risking it all for stolen moments with the one person who was supposed to be
