Victoria was coming for me.
I knew it the moment I left Daniel’s office, knew it in the specific way you know something
that has been true for a while and has only just been confirmed out loud. I walked back to
my apartment with that knowledge sitting in my chest like a stone, turned my key in the lock,
pushed the door open, and found Ethan asleep on the couch with his structural engineering
notebook open on his stomach and his temperature at a hundred and three point four.
I pressed my hand to his forehead and my heart rate did something it had no business doing
given everything else already happening that day.
He opened his eyes. “Mom.” His voice was wrong. Thin and dry. “I don’t feel good.”
“I know, baby,” I said, which I never call him because he hates it, and he didn’t even c
