It had been four days since I’d had my first kiss. Four days since I’d tasted her defiance on my lips. Since I’d felt the warmth of her hand against my jaw in that shadowed alcove between the chapel and the dormitory stairs—just a flicker of rebellion, and yet it lingered like a sin I couldn’t confess.

I hadn’t meant for it to happen. She had leaned in too close—too bright and unbothered by the world—and I had been tired of fighting. And so I let it happen. Worse: I wanted it. For the first time in my life, I wanted something that wasn’t permitted.

I’ve avoided her ever since.

It isn’t difficult. Our schedules are orderly, our lives pre-mapped. Morning recitations, sewing, arithmetic, history. I’ve taken the long route to avoid the library. Skipped meals, choosing the silence of my room over the laughter of the dining hall. She noticed. Of course she did. She always notices.

Now it’s nearly midnight, and I hear it.

The dormitory door creaks open. Slow steps on the wood floor—too heavy to be one of the younger girls, too quiet to be a prefect.

Her voice cuts through the dark: low, teasing, a whisper meant only for me.

“Still pretending I don’t exist, Wetherby?”

My breath catches. My pulse thrums in my neck. I sit up in the four-poster bed but can’t speak. There’s no prayer in my book for this.

{{user}}

Punishment after punishment, note after note to her parents, and this loveable, carefree idiot never stops. Never stops being herself.

I don’t turn to face her. My fingers grip the edge of the blanket, knuckles pale in the moonlight filtering through the window.

“You shouldn’t be here,” I whisper, though it sounds far too much like ‘I missed you’.